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As a firmware engineer, my job demands more "in-office-y" stuff than most other engineers on HN. I have specialized equipment. Hardware. I need to interface wit

As a firmware engineer, my job demands more "in-office-y" stuff than most other engineers on HN. I have specialized equipment. Hardware. I need to interface with manufacturing. So on. Guess what? I'm going on 1 year fully remote, and I'm doing great! Turns out, all that fancy equipment can be brought home with you. We deal with a contract manufacturer, and emailing them from home is no harder than emailing them from the office. Instead of being stuck in a concrete jungle, I can go test the product out in a more realistic environment in the park across from my home. It's made me happier, healthier AND more productive. Eliminating 2 hours a day of driving and train rides left me with more energy I can expend on my work! Who'da thunk it?

varispeed 2y ago
My friend's job pays him enough he could lease his own office near where he lives. He has all the "toys" he needs, space for his own research and he doesn't have to waste time to commute. My view is that offices were a thing because there was no technology to do otherwise and back then equipment was too large / expensive to be kept at employee's place. Now only reason to go to office is to artificially maintain property value so landlords don't lose money. Often the owners also have shares in the business and influence this return to office aka sustain my property portfolio nonsense
- deepspace 2y ago
  > Now only reason to go to office is to artificially maintain property value so landlords don't lose money. Bingo! Many companies are invested in real estate, and having the ticking time bomb of empty offices vs unsustainable office rent finally implode would be bad financially. Hence, the push everywhere to return to the office. The benefits of being in a physical office disappeared 20 years ago. COVID accelerated the formation of globally distributed teams. To now go back to commuting 2-3 hours a day, just to do your Zoom calls from and office desk, is insanity.
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  > Now only reason to go to office is to artificially maintain property value so landlords don't lose money. My boss goes in to the office even on non-office days. If I still lived in an apartment - ie, no separate room at the house to use as an office - I'd probably go in most days as well.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    My "office" is a converted deep (e.g. bedroom) cabinet, with a sliding keyboard tray and some shelves sawed out. My chair rolls in and fits within it, so the whole thing can be closed off when not in use. And that's because I want a large fixed screen. I think as people stay WFH, people will find ways of packing office spaces into smaller spaces. But people will also take advantage and move further out to get more space.
  - varispeed 2y ago
    I know of some start ups where employees got paid local co-working spaces, so they can go to any nearby where they live if they don't have space at home or don't want to work at home, but don't want to commute. There are solutions in between.
keyle 2y ago
I'm in a similar situation, but no hardware involved. Just the flexibility to juggle the kids at pick up times is godsend. I have much better no-interruption stretches of programming which yields better results overall.
- hellweaver666 2y ago
  Same here, thanks to me working from home my wife has been able to return to work (she's a teacher) which has given us more income (and less costs!) and massively improved our financial position!
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Is it possible that these RTO policies are actually meant to select for younger people and force others to resign? After all older people have more responsibilities outside of work like children and cannot work through Amazon’s meat grinder or do things like support brutal on call cycles. They’re also the ones with bigger commutes and other barriers to RTO, since they probably live away from city cores to buy houses and have space for a family. Meanwhile young people who live in the middle of downtowns in apartments that are near their work probably are unaffected by this kind of change.
  - linotype 2y ago
    Going into the office still sucks even if it’s right next door. The noise from open office floor plans isn’t healthy.
    - zer0zzz 2y ago
      My previous job actually had nice offices, and a pretty cohesive team culture. I still think work from home 2-3 days a week would have been better just to avoid the commute.
  - JambalayaJimbo 2y ago
    Career focused younger people have also been adversely affected by wfh for the last few years in a big way. All the mentorship and networking opportunities have withered. The non career focused younger people are living it up though.
Taniwha 2y ago
I'm in the same situation, though I design more hardware - I stopped going in most days of the week and avoided those commutes when my son was born, that allowed me to spend more time with him as a toddler. When he started highschool we left the US, he's mid 30s now and I've just retired. COVID lockdown was a doddle, I had been working at home full time for almost 30 years by then
- devsda 2y ago
  > COVID lockdown was a doddle, I had been working at home full time for almost 30 years by then The worst part of this RTO phase is those who were previously(pre covid) afforded permanent WFH or x days WFH at the time of hiring are also forced to go to office without exceptions.
analog31 2y ago
I'm also in a supposedly "hardware" role. Early in March 2020, the people in my group were all watching the data that were becoming available. My boss came into our work area and said: "You guys can all see what's happening. Let's clear out of here, then we'll figure out what to do." I went and got my minivan, loaded it with the contents of my lab, and took it home. Then I ordered high speed Internet service. A few days later the schools closed, and my family was all working at home. I already had some lab space at home due to my side business. Now, I didn't really mind working from work. It's a few minutes bike ride from my house. Oddly enough, things were happening so quickly that even being a few days or weeks ahead of the game meant that we were charting new territory within our company, which is a large multinational. For instance, with no specific location, we started collaborating beyond our original group. We improved our use of rapid prototyping services. We got a lot done despite, I think, having a more relaxed pace of work. Though I work in "hardware," what that means in this day and age is spending somewhere between 0 and 100% of your time programming. I spent a lot of time programming while looking out the window, taking a break and going for a walk, and so forth. It was also comforting to go back, eventually. I like the people. It could get lonely at home. I'm definitely not a introvert. (Edited to clarify: March 2020)
- teekert 2y ago
  I was in a role that did require a lot of talking, in a large health tech company. Oddly enough Covid was a great leveler for the org and I found myself reaching out to people across the world and learning about how Africa leads in certain market areas because of their straight-to-mobile attitude (midwives are fully mobile with cloud connected ultrasound devices in their backpack), I connected with India and that one guy in our team from the US promoted from on a laptop in a corner to a full meeting member. Shortly he was showing his home and we hung out after meetings. For someone expected to create a lot of IP, this was great. And then management started screaming we should get back the office. Which I did enjoy... For about 1-2 days a week.
- PeterStuer 2y ago
  The craziest thing I saw was a digitalization project that was on planning for months and scoped to take a year bwith a sizable team be realized by 3 people over the weekend. True nescessity has a way of cutting through all the usual crap.
ofcrpls 2y ago
Telematics HW during peak pandemic. Went from an Group office who's top eNPS opportunity was remote work requests - It went from not letting the Services guys telecommute in once a day to the hardware guys orchestrating a lab move to a new office location and enabling remote connectivity to test benches while shipping out 3 new products polling in test data from vehicles across the 50 states. RTO is an eyewash.
ldenoue 2y ago
Same here: I work on speech for a big company and working from the office is terrible. I had to squat the restroom 3 times yesterday so I could work (talk to my phone!) At home I am so much more productive and zero commute. Because of the badging policy in place, I end up scheduling non productive days at the office (doing email, reading other docs, meetings which are always with remote folks anyway but at least they see a genuine meeting room or phone booth behind my pretty face, so I guess that counts? ;)
- esafak 2y ago
  > Because of the badging policy in place, I end up scheduling non productive days at the office An added benefit of this is that it makes working from home look more productive, if they're keeping score :)
  - highcountess 2y ago
    I suggest you dispel of this notion that the players in this game have any sense of rationality or logic about this topic. There are massive (many trillion) commercial real estate interests at play here that totally trump all productivity, health, and even the holiest of holy climate change benefits. I don’t think people quite understand the real order of priorities and issues related to remote working. The big corporations are under both pulling and pushing pressures from the government and interests that control it to “put butts in seats” in big commercial real estate. They don’t care about anything else and they are throwing around money and fear to whip everyone into shape. Yes, there will be some pressure pushing back and dread by corporations stuck between the ol’ rock of competition and the government-favor hard place, but it is unlikely to win out at the corporate level unless some real independent competition rises that is putting on massive pressure by not having commercial real estate capital expenditures. A small office in a city can easily cost $1M per year, sure there are tax benefits, but they’re not benefits if you are competing with someone that does not have those expenses at all or far fewer, even after paying for team meetups that also fund a family vacation.
    - tehnub 2y ago
wannacboatmovie 2y ago
[flagged]
- porknubbins 2y ago
  You’ve come up with the most extreme scenario to make a point. Surely most of HN is not doing cutting edge electronic engineering that requires a $100K oscilloscope as a everyday tool.
  - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
    The parent described the equipment as "fancy" and "specialized" which is not translated as "$500 garbage off AliExpress". There is nothing extreme about that scenario. It is in fact extremely commonplace anywhere that does serious engineering.
    - OvidNaso 2y ago
      Yeah nothing extreme about going from $100,000 oscillators to $500 garbarage off aliexpress.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- mianos 2y ago
  Things are pretty specialised and RF before you need a 100K oscilloscope. I have a 500MHz DSO, 16 channel logic analyser, 10 digit GPS locked frequency counter, 5 digit bench multimeter and a 2GHz AWG and I think it's not even 10K. (I'd love 250K of test equipment all the same LOL).
- ryukoposting 2y ago
  Funny - in my case, I owned a nicer oscilloscope than my company was offering me anyway. Neither is worth more than a couple grand. I acknowledge that more expensive equipment exists, but I'll come back to that. > There are insurance considerations too - your house burns down with $250k worth of test equipment inside, who is paying for that? My employer already has insurance on their equipment, and I already have insurance on my equipment. I see no problem here. Even if there was a problem, why do you expect ME to be saddled with the burden of a problem that clearly exists between my employer and their insurer? Why should I (and thousands of others) pay the cost of 20 hours a week in commuting, when my company and the insurance provider could spend a couple hours to fully think through their terms? > There is a lack of critical thinking when it comes to extreme WFH arrogance. I recognize that not everyone can work remote. At the time the shutdowns began, I was working for a defense prime in an airgapped lab. Obviously, I couldn't bring my equipment home. But, in that case, there was a reason for onsite work - national security. For most devs, there simply isn't a similar justification for onsite work. None of what I said in my toplevel comment is intended to disparage anyone with a job that demands onsite work. Note how I never disparaged anyone in that situation, nor did I disparage anyone who runs a company where people are in that situation. I merely stated how much I like my situation, with some quiet jabs at companies too stubborn to afford the same benefits to themselves and their employees. Develop some reading comprehension before you start slinging accusations of poor critical thinking. So I see it the exact opposite way. I see a staggering level of arrogance in Amazon's move to sequester thousands of people in an office who simply don't need to be there. It's detrimental to the workers' health and happiness, it's a needless cost on Amazon's behalf, it pollutes our environment, and it does jack to improve their product. It's just a power move.
highcountess 2y ago
What all these discussions about home vs office work largely miss (I’ve seen a few tangential mentions) is that so much of this debate has a far different priority driving it than people think, it’s both capital investments and system pressure to keep the house of cards standing that is driving all meaningful measure of this issue and corporations/CEOs are willing to sacrifice the aloneness and even productivity and profitability of their employees in order to maintain the overall system and serve the central planners in the government that are pressuring them to get the commercial real estate house of cards stabilized by utilizing the floor space … even climate change and destruction of the planet’s climate (if we can believe the inconsistent propaganda in that regard) be damned. It’s time to shut up and “toe the line” as I’ve been told from regarding this kind of matter. If it chokes down to it, you could even be a specialized and expert in the field that they absolutely need; if you defy them, at least be ready to move on or even be laid off. In this kind of authoritarian system, nothing else takes priority over obedience … no matter how much your corporate “family” would be cutting itself deep in the flesh. I know this from experience and repeated observation.
- mattnewton 2y ago
  If that were true, I would expect a lot of smaller CEOs hiring away talent that likes to work remotely. But I think the truth is much simpler- the C suite is primarily made of extroverted people-persons who work better in person and think others will too.
  - mlinhares 2y ago
    If there's one thing the C-suite folks in these companies do is stay in the office. They're always "somewhere".
  - ipaddr 2y ago
    They are but not at these high rates of pay.
- blindluck 2y ago
  I love a conspiracy but I dont see how the incentives align. Real estate leases and ownership is a sunk cost. Office space can be relet. And even Amazon wont make a dent in the office realestate marker (warehouses, maybe...) They want people back in because either they think it makes the company more productive, to get people to quit rather than layoffs, or to give the appearance of doing something. Knowing Amazon they probably have some data to drive the decision too.
newsclues 2y ago
Should we be giving 25% raises to grocery store and retail workers who don’t have the option of WFH? Lots of people don’t work in an office and still have to commute, shouldn’t they get compensation if the office workers get this benefit?
- forgotoldacc 2y ago
  I'm of the opinion that actual hands-on labor is significantly undervalued, so yes.
  - newsclues 2y ago
    Funny that people disagree and downvote.
- ryukoposting 2y ago
  To this day, I maintain that the hardest job I've ever had was being a carhop at Sonic. All the soul-crushing foodservice insanity, and oh, you're on roller skates too. The hours I worked and the shit I saw in that job do not compare to any other foodservice job I ever had, let alone other jobs. The tips (which you only got if you weren't on shake duty) were the only part that made it worthwhile, which meant putting on a happy-go-lucky face even if it was covered in grease, shake crap, blood sweat and tears.
  - Salgat 2y ago
    Hardest job I had was a part time job working the cash register. Standing in one spot for hours on end, extremely repetitive, mind numbingly boring when not handling people, it was torture for me. I still get irrationally angry how most supermarkets don't give their workers a seat.
    - tayo42 2y ago
      You didn't sit on the little shelf for bagging when no one was looking? Lol
    - 2y ago
weq 2y ago
Instead of announcing mass layoffs, tech companies use RTO orders. They are very effective at trimming the fat and creating peons. Also effective in stopping the corperate real estate crash that alot of important trust funds depend on. Productivity < Compliant Workers < Stock value
- WhyNotHugo 2y ago
  RTO definitely helps reduce workforce and keep the most complaint workers. I suspect that "most compliant workers" and "most creative engineers" has little overlap.
  - rty32 2y ago
    Well, 'most "complaint" workers' completely changes the meaning here.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    Even if they overlap, your creative engineers will naturally become less creative if you start making their workplace worse for no reason.
hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
I'm a software lead for passenger information systems on public transit. What that means is: The little screen that shows you what your next stop is, and the little voice clip that plays "Next Stop: Braintree" or what have you. It's not quite as nice a feedback loop as ordinary web dev, but I've found a $20 webcam easily pays for itself many times over in this environment. This becomes all the more important as we start to build more advanced software functionality into our product offerings, which is where I really shine despite my undergrad in electrical engineering (I chose EE, like how aspiring writers choose to major in the classics).
- slekker 2y ago
  Thank you for your work! I always wondered how those worked, and where the info came from, on top of what it runs on etc -- moreover I love seeing software built that directly improves people's lives :)
  - guappa 2y ago
    Try copenhagen. They use the screen for ads and flash the name of the next stop for a couple of seconds between ads.
    - chgs 2y ago
      Adverts are a cancer on society, the reason we can’t have nice things.
      - generic92034 2y ago
        I share your sentiment, but do not forget the nice things we do have ads are paying for.
        chrismorgan 2y ago
        Limiting it to this sort of context (deliberately excluding web stuff, where there may be more argument): I don't believe there is anything nice the ads are paying for.
lofaszvanitt 2y ago
Healthier, for how long? I can't wait to see the influx of books about this topic 10 years later.
mrweasel 2y ago
> Eliminating 2 hours a day of driving and train rides left me with more energy I can expend on my work! Companies forget this. I have had coworkers quit because they couldn't deal with transport. One got stressed out of his mind because our office was close to motorway which frequently has accidents and if that happened he might not be able to pick up the kids on time. Others had to leave clients hanging because they had to leave, "daycare closes at 16:30 and it's now 16:00". Working from home it was much more frequent that clients in the late afternoon would get "Sure, give me ten minutes to pick up the kids and we'll finish this today".
- camillomiller 2y ago
  Ok, so why is that. I can't seem to find any reasonable explanation as to why they forget it. Especially considering that data absolutely does not seem on the side of RTO. What's your theory?
  - advael 2y ago
    I think the most compelling explanation is that control over workers is more important than productivity to the leadership of many of these companies Perhaps especially in the case of larger companies, sunk costs on office space may be a factor
    - graemep 2y ago
      The latter means you are positing management incompetent enough that they do not understand that sunk costs should be ignored? I am not saying you are wrong, BTW. Even worse, in many cases the costs are not entirely sunk. You might be able to get out of a lease with a penalty, if you own the buildings you can sell them. In either case its cheaper to keep a building unused than to run it as an office.
      - advael 2y ago
        In fact I used the key phrase "sunk cost" directly to imply that, since that's entered the lexicon as a common reasoning error While business leaders want to think of and portray themselves as these hyper-rational actors whose every choice is either made from ingenuity or total necessity, this is obviously false and I think the prestige and optics of office spaces heavily play into the priorities of managers, especially as compared to people who do any other kind of work
aurareturn 2y ago
It’s great that it works in your case. But one thing HN community does not mention enough is when executives make these policies, they are looking at overall productivity and not individuals. Also, HN posts may have selection bias. Perhaps people who perform better in office do not want to admit it. Perhaps people who work in the office don’t have time or the opportunity to post on HN as often. Many HN posters still spout conspiracy theories like real estate investments by executives as the reason why RoT is enacted. When in reality, it’s highly likely that the executives see overall productivity being down and that HN posters do not represent the majority.
- chgs 2y ago
  Is anyone preventing those people working in the office?
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    You often hear about HN posters complaining that when they do go into the office, they’re just having Zoom calls in the office instead. That’s what Amazon is trying to fix here. Everyone in office 5 days a week.
    - objclxt 2y ago
      > when they do go into the office, they’re just having Zoom calls in the office instead. That’s what Amazon is trying to fix here. Not really. At a company the size of Amazon teams are often in other buildings, if not other cities or countries entirely. The zoom calls continue unabated.
      - aurareturn 2y ago
        I think they're talking about their own team. Cross country or cross team meetings might always require Zoom. If you have 3 days of office, you'll always be in Zoom calls because at least some of the team members will be at home.
gambiting 2y ago
I'm a game dev and traditionally console devkits were the most guarded secret in the world, you had to have special locks in your office, only keep them away from the windows with areas with controlled access etc etc etc. Luckily during the pandemic the requirements have relaxed and I can work from home and have console devkits at home, turns out it's not such a big deal. Devkits just brick themselves if they don't have regular access to home servers anyway.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  So, if you have a power failure, your devkits all commit suicide?
  - gambiting 2y ago
    Well no, you can recover them, but without regular activation they are useless, so even if one was stolen it's not going to be useful to anyone.
anonzzzies 2y ago
Yep, I'm doing firmware work from home too; I have a create with the hardware with me which I bring with me when I go to the office, which is basically never. Weird to think this was considered 'impossible' before by many.
naikrovek 2y ago
ah-hah, but have you considered the executive's perspective on this? that perspective is "no." the only reason executives really dislike remote work, is because as "face people" they have never had a place for it. It doesn't benefit them in any way, so how could it possibly benefit anyone else? they have never had a position like yours. they both deeply understand that no one is like them, and bizarrely believe that everyone works like they do and benefits from working in the office. I have worked closely with executives throughout my career and the only common thread between them all is the intense hatred for telecommuting. I have never met an executive which understands it well enough to understand its place in their work environment. These same executives frequently called me after hours asking for work to be done immediately; work that could only be done in the office because that's where all of my digital tools were located and where the network connectivity was, etc. Zero recognition that one of those things could solve the other. Well, it's that, or they just want to be dicks and give out orders. That could be it, too. It's probably 50% of each. "executives get benefits, plebes do not."
throw0101a 2y ago
> Eliminating 2 hours a day of driving and train rides left me with more energy I can expend on my work! Who'da thunk it? I think I saw it mentioned in an old HN thread once, but I'd like to see a study between the WFH desire and its relationship with (a) commute times, and (b) commuting method: walking, cycling, driving, urban transit, commuter rail, etc. If your commute was a 15-30 minute (one-way) bicycle ride, how different would you feel about going into the office more often?
- ryukoposting 2y ago
  I live in Wisconsin, so 30-60 minutes of cycling year-round is a non-starter. I'd much rather take public transit, since then I can read a book or daydream.
  - throw0101a 2y ago
    > I live in Wisconsin, so 30-60 minutes of cycling year-round is a non-starter. I live in Toronto, Canada, and in the Before Times (pre-COVID) I cycled to work everyday from March to December (rain or shine, as long as the streets were clear). See perhaps the video "Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU Also the Oh The Urbanity! channel, a couple who live in Ottawa/Montreal: * https://www.youtube.com/@OhTheUrbanity/search?query=winter https://www.youtube.com/@OhTheUrbanity/search?query=winter
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
I'd say one counter-argument to bringing stuff home, outside of the obvious one like it being a supercooled quantum computer, is if it's valuable stuff; say you've got 100K of gear at home, who is responsible / whose insurance gets billed if it gets stolen or damaged? Does the insurance require additional security measures on your house to insure it? Who pays for that? Anyway that depends entirely on how specialized your specialized equipment would be. I had a quick browse of your profile, it looks like you're a firmware engineer so I assume what you have is a few thousand worth of electronics hardware like oscilloscopes and that other magic stuff that firmware people have so nothing that would break the bank or fall outside of your homeowner's insurance, but you get what I mean. That said, most non-hardware IT people have laptops nowadays that they are expected to take home, I've got two current-day macbooks so that's at least six grand of hardware sitting at home, plus the rest. I should double check my insurance <_<. At least the macbooks themselves are covered by my employer's insurance.
synergy20 2y ago
similar situation here, I'm also a firmware engineer for the most part, and I thought it's very hard to make remote job to work(e.g. comparing to web developers,etc) since I need hardware access. Turns out all I need is a home lab with a few basic equipment(scopes,etc) and a few boards, worked well so far. The key is to get the job done.
polishdude20 2y ago
Is your company hiring? This sounds like a dream job. Having a little home hardware lab.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

varispeed 2y ago

My friend's job pays him enough he could lease his own office near where he lives. He has all the "toys" he needs, space for his own research and he doesn't have to waste time to commute. My view is that offices were a thing because there was no technology to do otherwise and back then equipment was too large / expensive to be kept at employee's place. Now only reason to go to office is to artificially maintain property value so landlords don't lose money. Often the owners also have shares in the business and influence this return to office aka sustain my property portfolio nonsense

deepspace 2y ago
> Now only reason to go to office is to artificially maintain property value so landlords don't lose money. Bingo! Many companies are invested in real estate, and having the ticking time bomb of empty offices vs unsustainable office rent finally implode would be bad financially. Hence, the push everywhere to return to the office. The benefits of being in a physical office disappeared 20 years ago. COVID accelerated the formation of globally distributed teams. To now go back to commuting 2-3 hours a day, just to do your Zoom calls from and office desk, is insanity.
tbrownaw 2y ago
> Now only reason to go to office is to artificially maintain property value so landlords don't lose money. My boss goes in to the office even on non-office days. If I still lived in an apartment - ie, no separate room at the house to use as an office - I'd probably go in most days as well.
- vidarh 2y ago
  My "office" is a converted deep (e.g. bedroom) cabinet, with a sliding keyboard tray and some shelves sawed out. My chair rolls in and fits within it, so the whole thing can be closed off when not in use. And that's because I want a large fixed screen. I think as people stay WFH, people will find ways of packing office spaces into smaller spaces. But people will also take advantage and move further out to get more space.
- varispeed 2y ago
  I know of some start ups where employees got paid local co-working spaces, so they can go to any nearby where they live if they don't have space at home or don't want to work at home, but don't want to commute. There are solutions in between.

keyle 2y ago

I'm in a similar situation, but no hardware involved. Just the flexibility to juggle the kids at pick up times is godsend. I have much better no-interruption stretches of programming which yields better results overall.

hellweaver666 2y ago
Same here, thanks to me working from home my wife has been able to return to work (she's a teacher) which has given us more income (and less costs!) and massively improved our financial position!
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Is it possible that these RTO policies are actually meant to select for younger people and force others to resign? After all older people have more responsibilities outside of work like children and cannot work through Amazon’s meat grinder or do things like support brutal on call cycles. They’re also the ones with bigger commutes and other barriers to RTO, since they probably live away from city cores to buy houses and have space for a family. Meanwhile young people who live in the middle of downtowns in apartments that are near their work probably are unaffected by this kind of change.
- linotype 2y ago
  Going into the office still sucks even if it’s right next door. The noise from open office floor plans isn’t healthy.
  - zer0zzz 2y ago
    My previous job actually had nice offices, and a pretty cohesive team culture. I still think work from home 2-3 days a week would have been better just to avoid the commute.
- JambalayaJimbo 2y ago
  Career focused younger people have also been adversely affected by wfh for the last few years in a big way. All the mentorship and networking opportunities have withered. The non career focused younger people are living it up though.

Taniwha 2y ago

I'm in the same situation, though I design more hardware - I stopped going in most days of the week and avoided those commutes when my son was born, that allowed me to spend more time with him as a toddler. When he started highschool we left the US, he's mid 30s now and I've just retired. COVID lockdown was a doddle, I had been working at home full time for almost 30 years by then

devsda 2y ago
> COVID lockdown was a doddle, I had been working at home full time for almost 30 years by then The worst part of this RTO phase is those who were previously(pre covid) afforded permanent WFH or x days WFH at the time of hiring are also forced to go to office without exceptions.

analog31 2y ago

I'm also in a supposedly "hardware" role. Early in March 2020, the people in my group were all watching the data that were becoming available. My boss came into our work area and said: "You guys can all see what's happening. Let's clear out of here, then we'll figure out what to do." I went and got my minivan, loaded it with the contents of my lab, and took it home. Then I ordered high speed Internet service. A few days later the schools closed, and my family was all working at home. I already had some lab space at home due to my side business. Now, I didn't really mind working from work. It's a few minutes bike ride from my house. Oddly enough, things were happening so quickly that even being a few days or weeks ahead of the game meant that we were charting new territory within our company, which is a large multinational. For instance, with no specific location, we started collaborating beyond our original group. We improved our use of rapid prototyping services. We got a lot done despite, I think, having a more relaxed pace of work. Though I work in "hardware," what that means in this day and age is spending somewhere between 0 and 100% of your time programming. I spent a lot of time programming while looking out the window, taking a break and going for a walk, and so forth. It was also comforting to go back, eventually. I like the people. It could get lonely at home. I'm definitely not a introvert. (Edited to clarify: March 2020)

teekert 2y ago
I was in a role that did require a lot of talking, in a large health tech company. Oddly enough Covid was a great leveler for the org and I found myself reaching out to people across the world and learning about how Africa leads in certain market areas because of their straight-to-mobile attitude (midwives are fully mobile with cloud connected ultrasound devices in their backpack), I connected with India and that one guy in our team from the US promoted from on a laptop in a corner to a full meeting member. Shortly he was showing his home and we hung out after meetings. For someone expected to create a lot of IP, this was great. And then management started screaming we should get back the office. Which I did enjoy... For about 1-2 days a week.
PeterStuer 2y ago
The craziest thing I saw was a digitalization project that was on planning for months and scoped to take a year bwith a sizable team be realized by 3 people over the weekend. True nescessity has a way of cutting through all the usual crap.

ofcrpls 2y ago

Telematics HW during peak pandemic. Went from an Group office who's top eNPS opportunity was remote work requests - It went from not letting the Services guys telecommute in once a day to the hardware guys orchestrating a lab move to a new office location and enabling remote connectivity to test benches while shipping out 3 new products polling in test data from vehicles across the 50 states. RTO is an eyewash.

ldenoue 2y ago

Same here: I work on speech for a big company and working from the office is terrible. I had to squat the restroom 3 times yesterday so I could work (talk to my phone!) At home I am so much more productive and zero commute. Because of the badging policy in place, I end up scheduling non productive days at the office (doing email, reading other docs, meetings which are always with remote folks anyway but at least they see a genuine meeting room or phone booth behind my pretty face, so I guess that counts? ;)

esafak 2y ago
> Because of the badging policy in place, I end up scheduling non productive days at the office An added benefit of this is that it makes working from home look more productive, if they're keeping score :)
- highcountess 2y ago
  I suggest you dispel of this notion that the players in this game have any sense of rationality or logic about this topic. There are massive (many trillion) commercial real estate interests at play here that totally trump all productivity, health, and even the holiest of holy climate change benefits. I don’t think people quite understand the real order of priorities and issues related to remote working. The big corporations are under both pulling and pushing pressures from the government and interests that control it to “put butts in seats” in big commercial real estate. They don’t care about anything else and they are throwing around money and fear to whip everyone into shape. Yes, there will be some pressure pushing back and dread by corporations stuck between the ol’ rock of competition and the government-favor hard place, but it is unlikely to win out at the corporate level unless some real independent competition rises that is putting on massive pressure by not having commercial real estate capital expenditures. A small office in a city can easily cost $1M per year, sure there are tax benefits, but they’re not benefits if you are competing with someone that does not have those expenses at all or far fewer, even after paying for team meetups that also fund a family vacation.
  - tehnub 2y ago

wannacboatmovie 2y ago

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porknubbins 2y ago
You’ve come up with the most extreme scenario to make a point. Surely most of HN is not doing cutting edge electronic engineering that requires a $100K oscilloscope as a everyday tool.
- wannacboatmovie 2y ago
  The parent described the equipment as "fancy" and "specialized" which is not translated as "$500 garbage off AliExpress". There is nothing extreme about that scenario. It is in fact extremely commonplace anywhere that does serious engineering.
  - OvidNaso 2y ago
    Yeah nothing extreme about going from $100,000 oscillators to $500 garbarage off aliexpress.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
mianos 2y ago
Things are pretty specialised and RF before you need a 100K oscilloscope. I have a 500MHz DSO, 16 channel logic analyser, 10 digit GPS locked frequency counter, 5 digit bench multimeter and a 2GHz AWG and I think it's not even 10K. (I'd love 250K of test equipment all the same LOL).
ryukoposting 2y ago
Funny - in my case, I owned a nicer oscilloscope than my company was offering me anyway. Neither is worth more than a couple grand. I acknowledge that more expensive equipment exists, but I'll come back to that. > There are insurance considerations too - your house burns down with $250k worth of test equipment inside, who is paying for that? My employer already has insurance on their equipment, and I already have insurance on my equipment. I see no problem here. Even if there was a problem, why do you expect ME to be saddled with the burden of a problem that clearly exists between my employer and their insurer? Why should I (and thousands of others) pay the cost of 20 hours a week in commuting, when my company and the insurance provider could spend a couple hours to fully think through their terms? > There is a lack of critical thinking when it comes to extreme WFH arrogance. I recognize that not everyone can work remote. At the time the shutdowns began, I was working for a defense prime in an airgapped lab. Obviously, I couldn't bring my equipment home. But, in that case, there was a reason for onsite work - national security. For most devs, there simply isn't a similar justification for onsite work. None of what I said in my toplevel comment is intended to disparage anyone with a job that demands onsite work. Note how I never disparaged anyone in that situation, nor did I disparage anyone who runs a company where people are in that situation. I merely stated how much I like my situation, with some quiet jabs at companies too stubborn to afford the same benefits to themselves and their employees. Develop some reading comprehension before you start slinging accusations of poor critical thinking. So I see it the exact opposite way. I see a staggering level of arrogance in Amazon's move to sequester thousands of people in an office who simply don't need to be there. It's detrimental to the workers' health and happiness, it's a needless cost on Amazon's behalf, it pollutes our environment, and it does jack to improve their product. It's just a power move.

highcountess 2y ago

What all these discussions about home vs office work largely miss (I’ve seen a few tangential mentions) is that so much of this debate has a far different priority driving it than people think, it’s both capital investments and system pressure to keep the house of cards standing that is driving all meaningful measure of this issue and corporations/CEOs are willing to sacrifice the aloneness and even productivity and profitability of their employees in order to maintain the overall system and serve the central planners in the government that are pressuring them to get the commercial real estate house of cards stabilized by utilizing the floor space … even climate change and destruction of the planet’s climate (if we can believe the inconsistent propaganda in that regard) be damned. It’s time to shut up and “toe the line” as I’ve been told from regarding this kind of matter. If it chokes down to it, you could even be a specialized and expert in the field that they absolutely need; if you defy them, at least be ready to move on or even be laid off. In this kind of authoritarian system, nothing else takes priority over obedience … no matter how much your corporate “family” would be cutting itself deep in the flesh. I know this from experience and repeated observation.

mattnewton 2y ago
If that were true, I would expect a lot of smaller CEOs hiring away talent that likes to work remotely. But I think the truth is much simpler- the C suite is primarily made of extroverted people-persons who work better in person and think others will too.
- mlinhares 2y ago
  If there's one thing the C-suite folks in these companies do is stay in the office. They're always "somewhere".
- ipaddr 2y ago
  They are but not at these high rates of pay.
blindluck 2y ago
I love a conspiracy but I dont see how the incentives align. Real estate leases and ownership is a sunk cost. Office space can be relet. And even Amazon wont make a dent in the office realestate marker (warehouses, maybe...) They want people back in because either they think it makes the company more productive, to get people to quit rather than layoffs, or to give the appearance of doing something. Knowing Amazon they probably have some data to drive the decision too.

newsclues 2y ago

Should we be giving 25% raises to grocery store and retail workers who don’t have the option of WFH? Lots of people don’t work in an office and still have to commute, shouldn’t they get compensation if the office workers get this benefit?

forgotoldacc 2y ago
I'm of the opinion that actual hands-on labor is significantly undervalued, so yes.
- newsclues 2y ago
  Funny that people disagree and downvote.
ryukoposting 2y ago
To this day, I maintain that the hardest job I've ever had was being a carhop at Sonic. All the soul-crushing foodservice insanity, and oh, you're on roller skates too. The hours I worked and the shit I saw in that job do not compare to any other foodservice job I ever had, let alone other jobs. The tips (which you only got if you weren't on shake duty) were the only part that made it worthwhile, which meant putting on a happy-go-lucky face even if it was covered in grease, shake crap, blood sweat and tears.
- Salgat 2y ago
  Hardest job I had was a part time job working the cash register. Standing in one spot for hours on end, extremely repetitive, mind numbingly boring when not handling people, it was torture for me. I still get irrationally angry how most supermarkets don't give their workers a seat.
  - tayo42 2y ago
    You didn't sit on the little shelf for bagging when no one was looking? Lol
  - 2y ago

weq 2y ago

Instead of announcing mass layoffs, tech companies use RTO orders. They are very effective at trimming the fat and creating peons. Also effective in stopping the corperate real estate crash that alot of important trust funds depend on. Productivity < Compliant Workers < Stock value

WhyNotHugo 2y ago
RTO definitely helps reduce workforce and keep the most complaint workers. I suspect that "most compliant workers" and "most creative engineers" has little overlap.
- rty32 2y ago
  Well, 'most "complaint" workers' completely changes the meaning here.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Even if they overlap, your creative engineers will naturally become less creative if you start making their workplace worse for no reason.

hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago

I'm a software lead for passenger information systems on public transit. What that means is: The little screen that shows you what your next stop is, and the little voice clip that plays "Next Stop: Braintree" or what have you. It's not quite as nice a feedback loop as ordinary web dev, but I've found a $20 webcam easily pays for itself many times over in this environment. This becomes all the more important as we start to build more advanced software functionality into our product offerings, which is where I really shine despite my undergrad in electrical engineering (I chose EE, like how aspiring writers choose to major in the classics).

slekker 2y ago
Thank you for your work! I always wondered how those worked, and where the info came from, on top of what it runs on etc -- moreover I love seeing software built that directly improves people's lives :)
- guappa 2y ago
  Try copenhagen. They use the screen for ads and flash the name of the next stop for a couple of seconds between ads.
  - chgs 2y ago
    Adverts are a cancer on society, the reason we can’t have nice things.
    - generic92034 2y ago
      I share your sentiment, but do not forget the nice things we do have ads are paying for.
      - chrismorgan 2y ago
        Limiting it to this sort of context (deliberately excluding web stuff, where there may be more argument): I don't believe there is anything nice the ads are paying for.

lofaszvanitt 2y ago

Healthier, for how long? I can't wait to see the influx of books about this topic 10 years later.

mrweasel 2y ago

> Eliminating 2 hours a day of driving and train rides left me with more energy I can expend on my work! Companies forget this. I have had coworkers quit because they couldn't deal with transport. One got stressed out of his mind because our office was close to motorway which frequently has accidents and if that happened he might not be able to pick up the kids on time. Others had to leave clients hanging because they had to leave, "daycare closes at 16:30 and it's now 16:00". Working from home it was much more frequent that clients in the late afternoon would get "Sure, give me ten minutes to pick up the kids and we'll finish this today".

camillomiller 2y ago
Ok, so why is that. I can't seem to find any reasonable explanation as to why they forget it. Especially considering that data absolutely does not seem on the side of RTO. What's your theory?
- advael 2y ago
  I think the most compelling explanation is that control over workers is more important than productivity to the leadership of many of these companies Perhaps especially in the case of larger companies, sunk costs on office space may be a factor
  - graemep 2y ago
    The latter means you are positing management incompetent enough that they do not understand that sunk costs should be ignored? I am not saying you are wrong, BTW. Even worse, in many cases the costs are not entirely sunk. You might be able to get out of a lease with a penalty, if you own the buildings you can sell them. In either case its cheaper to keep a building unused than to run it as an office.
    - advael 2y ago
      In fact I used the key phrase "sunk cost" directly to imply that, since that's entered the lexicon as a common reasoning error While business leaders want to think of and portray themselves as these hyper-rational actors whose every choice is either made from ingenuity or total necessity, this is obviously false and I think the prestige and optics of office spaces heavily play into the priorities of managers, especially as compared to people who do any other kind of work

aurareturn 2y ago

It’s great that it works in your case. But one thing HN community does not mention enough is when executives make these policies, they are looking at overall productivity and not individuals. Also, HN posts may have selection bias. Perhaps people who perform better in office do not want to admit it. Perhaps people who work in the office don’t have time or the opportunity to post on HN as often. Many HN posters still spout conspiracy theories like real estate investments by executives as the reason why RoT is enacted. When in reality, it’s highly likely that the executives see overall productivity being down and that HN posters do not represent the majority.

chgs 2y ago
Is anyone preventing those people working in the office?
- aurareturn 2y ago
  You often hear about HN posters complaining that when they do go into the office, they’re just having Zoom calls in the office instead. That’s what Amazon is trying to fix here. Everyone in office 5 days a week.
  - objclxt 2y ago
    > when they do go into the office, they’re just having Zoom calls in the office instead. That’s what Amazon is trying to fix here. Not really. At a company the size of Amazon teams are often in other buildings, if not other cities or countries entirely. The zoom calls continue unabated.
    - aurareturn 2y ago
      I think they're talking about their own team. Cross country or cross team meetings might always require Zoom. If you have 3 days of office, you'll always be in Zoom calls because at least some of the team members will be at home.

gambiting 2y ago

I'm a game dev and traditionally console devkits were the most guarded secret in the world, you had to have special locks in your office, only keep them away from the windows with areas with controlled access etc etc etc. Luckily during the pandemic the requirements have relaxed and I can work from home and have console devkits at home, turns out it's not such a big deal. Devkits just brick themselves if they don't have regular access to home servers anyway.

thaumasiotes 2y ago
So, if you have a power failure, your devkits all commit suicide?
- gambiting 2y ago
  Well no, you can recover them, but without regular activation they are useless, so even if one was stolen it's not going to be useful to anyone.

anonzzzies 2y ago

Yep, I'm doing firmware work from home too; I have a create with the hardware with me which I bring with me when I go to the office, which is basically never. Weird to think this was considered 'impossible' before by many.

naikrovek 2y ago

ah-hah, but have you considered the executive's perspective on this? that perspective is "no." the only reason executives really dislike remote work, is because as "face people" they have never had a place for it. It doesn't benefit them in any way, so how could it possibly benefit anyone else? they have never had a position like yours. they both deeply understand that no one is like them, and bizarrely believe that everyone works like they do and benefits from working in the office. I have worked closely with executives throughout my career and the only common thread between them all is the intense hatred for telecommuting. I have never met an executive which understands it well enough to understand its place in their work environment. These same executives frequently called me after hours asking for work to be done immediately; work that could only be done in the office because that's where all of my digital tools were located and where the network connectivity was, etc. Zero recognition that one of those things could solve the other. Well, it's that, or they just want to be dicks and give out orders. That could be it, too. It's probably 50% of each. "executives get benefits, plebes do not."

throw0101a 2y ago

> Eliminating 2 hours a day of driving and train rides left me with more energy I can expend on my work! Who'da thunk it? I think I saw it mentioned in an old HN thread once, but I'd like to see a study between the WFH desire and its relationship with (a) commute times, and (b) commuting method: walking, cycling, driving, urban transit, commuter rail, etc. If your commute was a 15-30 minute (one-way) bicycle ride, how different would you feel about going into the office more often?

ryukoposting 2y ago
I live in Wisconsin, so 30-60 minutes of cycling year-round is a non-starter. I'd much rather take public transit, since then I can read a book or daydream.
- throw0101a 2y ago
  > I live in Wisconsin, so 30-60 minutes of cycling year-round is a non-starter. I live in Toronto, Canada, and in the Before Times (pre-COVID) I cycled to work everyday from March to December (rain or shine, as long as the streets were clear). See perhaps the video "Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU Also the Oh The Urbanity! channel, a couple who live in Ottawa/Montreal: * https://www.youtube.com/@OhTheUrbanity/search?query=winter https://www.youtube.com/@OhTheUrbanity/search?query=winter

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

I'd say one counter-argument to bringing stuff home, outside of the obvious one like it being a supercooled quantum computer, is if it's valuable stuff; say you've got 100K of gear at home, who is responsible / whose insurance gets billed if it gets stolen or damaged? Does the insurance require additional security measures on your house to insure it? Who pays for that? Anyway that depends entirely on how specialized your specialized equipment would be. I had a quick browse of your profile, it looks like you're a firmware engineer so I assume what you have is a few thousand worth of electronics hardware like oscilloscopes and that other magic stuff that firmware people have so nothing that would break the bank or fall outside of your homeowner's insurance, but you get what I mean. That said, most non-hardware IT people have laptops nowadays that they are expected to take home, I've got two current-day macbooks so that's at least six grand of hardware sitting at home, plus the rest. I should double check my insurance <_<. At least the macbooks themselves are covered by my employer's insurance.

synergy20 2y ago

similar situation here, I'm also a firmware engineer for the most part, and I thought it's very hard to make remote job to work(e.g. comparing to web developers,etc) since I need hardware access. Turns out all I need is a home lab with a few basic equipment(scopes,etc) and a few boards, worked well so far. The key is to get the job done.

polishdude20 2y ago

Is your company hiring? This sounds like a dream job. Having a little home hardware lab.

deleted 2y ago

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