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It's good to see some serious arguments for WFH. Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely se

It's good to see some serious arguments for WFH. Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence, often it's something they're very grumpy about (hardly the best state of mind for good judgement) and often based on the assumption that company productivity is based on workers doing what they do (usually far from the truth, workers in general don't have anything like the same composition of tasks that CEOs do). It's unfortunate to that it has divided into camps, as there are bound to be cases/roles/groupings of workers where one approach comes out better and others where it's worse. But very quickly everyone went pretty much for one-size fits all (with a few exceptions).

datavirtue 2y ago
We simply are not going back, period. They are fighting the trend. Ask your analysis team and marketing about what happens to people that fight the trend.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
  If I am called back, I will come in, but only for as long as it takes me to move onto something else. It really is that simple. On the other hand, executives are clearly banking on a good old-fashioned recession to rein in the unruly and ungrateful employees.
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    It's not just about RTO. The trend is bigger than that. It's just overall reality. If you need to go remote to fill a position then so be it. But some people have certain thoughts lodged squarely in their atrophied boomer brain about how everything has to be, no exceptions because feelings. The companies that don't have fog stuck in their head are going out and hiring remote and they have great cultures and are oozing productivity. That's the trend.
JoshTriplett 2y ago
> Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence In some cases, the pressure is also coming from external to the company, from cities and VCs and similar who care about the commercial real-estate value of now-abandoned offices.
- kvmet 2y ago
  Is this actually happening? I have seen this idea thrown out a lot online but it always feels like a conspiracy theory to me (akin to "fine art is a tax write-off")
  - finnh 2y ago
    I think it explains some of Amazon's choices, as they made multibillion dollar bets on office space and real estate in Seattle.
    - coliveira 2y ago
      Yes, Amazon needs people to fill their expensive offices in Seattle, or otherwise explain to investors that they wasted billions of dollars building new offices that were used less than 5 years.
      - bruce511 2y ago
        >> otherwise explain to investors that they wasted billions of dollars building new offices that were used less than 5 years. So what? I mean companies write down things all the time. "We've revalued our $billion office and adjusted our balance sheet to match. Cause was a global pandemic which we considered as a risk factor in 2019, but it was negligible." Stock will drop a % or two for a week, then recover and move on (especially as the Amazon machine continues to print cash.) Microsoft wrote off the Nokia purchase with a shrug and the world just moved on. Explaining a change of work environment to investors seems like a pretty minor bump, not a major factor in decision making.
lowbloodsugar 2y ago
[flagged]
- notyourwork 2y ago
  I don’t follow the male, female, disabled person argument at all.
  - lowbloodsugar 2y ago
    The canonical example would be it's hard to have a serendipitous conversation with your male colleagues in the mens restroom if you're female. That's the obvious one. Then we get to styles of conversation and engagement. I've had to defend promotions for female engineers from criticism based entirely on their communication. "She is not assertive enough." Ok, is she highly effective at her job? Yes. Ok, then what the fuck are we talking about? And always what we're talking about is men communicate a certain way, and women don't, and the men don't want to have to change. To answer the disabled question, there was a flight of stairs at the office, and the meeting would end and people would just head up the stairs. Except the dude in the wheelchair. I'm autistic and I have light sensitivity, and after a meeting in a nice bright window office, I am exhausted and don't want to engage in social rituals. My point is that the examples that tech leaders give as the reason to go back to the office are simply male social rituals, held up as "how we have good ideas and develop new hires". They're not. They are all managers performing post-hoc rationalization theater And if those were the goals, they'd figure out an effective way to meet them that's better than "chatting to john while taking a leak". And the most galling thing is that every single one of my most impactful career moments didn't involve having a serendipitous conversation. It involved researching things I was interested in. I am for nerds and against tech-bros.
    - notyourwork 2y ago
      I’m sorry but rude people exist everywhere and it’s not a tech thing. I’ve been in big tech for over a decade and I don’t have conversations in the bathroom. If you think WFH reduces these bro-relationships, you are being naive and they just become less accessible.
j45 2y ago
The issue seems to be less about wfh or not. It’s just how well does a company culture support distributed work (many locations) or not.
- Arn_Thor 2y ago
  “Company culture”… that’s the word they use for sure. Often it’s ego, sunk cost fallacies and other things that have to do with the culture in the C suite for sure. Pay people well and treat them with respect and you’ll end up with good and loyal employees, as always.
baxtr 2y ago
It’s unfortunate that it has gotten so black and white. I’m a big fan of WFH. But I also think it’s beneficial to see people in the office and interact on a regular basis. Why can’t we have both?
- chii 2y ago
  > Why can’t we have both? having both is equivalent to having WFH (but without the cost savings to the business regarding office rentals). People who want an office are likely doing so in the expectation that there'd be people there. What actually happens is that the office is semi-empty on most days, and you'd get a few ghosts here and there (unless there's mandated office days). So in the end, hybrid (without mandated days) is basically the same as WFH.
  - matrix2003 2y ago
    I kind of think WeWork’s business model might have succeeded in the WFH post-Covid era. It allows the company to be flexible with meeting space budget without being on the hook for permanent space. My company ran out of space pre-Covid, so we would book random meeting spaces (within walking distance) around the city.
    - Hendrikto 2y ago
      There are companies that have pulled off We Work style office renting successfully for decades. Just without the crazy, megalomaniac founder CEO, without trying to spin it as being the savior of humanity, without a buttload of unrelated and extremely questionable side projects, without trying to sell it as a tech company and inflating the valuation to absurd levels.
      - baxtr 2y ago
        But did the founders of those companies become as rich as the WeWork founder?
  - baxtr 2y ago
colechristensen 2y ago
Working in the office could be pretty nice with reasonable commute times and actual office space for employees. Like earning a top 10ish percent salary but the parking lot is full and people use bike locks on their office chairs so they don’t get stolen because they aren’t enough chairs. Give me an office with a door and a reasonable commute and I’ll be happy to go in to work every day. “Cost optimize” your office space until it’s hell for me and it’s a no until you double my salary. And cities don’t need to be designed like they are, seas of residential that are miles away from any workspace and all of the offices crammed together in unlivable downtowns that only have living spaces for single young people.
- bruce511 2y ago
  Yes, all this. I have a 5 minute commute, an office with a door, and plenty of parking. Going back to the office is no big deal (and has some major advantages.) But of course context will vary from one person to the next. Which is why sweeping generalizations is mostly fruitless. There are endless factors in play here on both sides of the table.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    If we could all be like executives and only come into the office when we feel like it unless it’s a rarely important occasion and have actual offices, it would be a much different game.

datavirtue 2y ago

We simply are not going back, period. They are fighting the trend. Ask your analysis team and marketing about what happens to people that fight the trend.

A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
If I am called back, I will come in, but only for as long as it takes me to move onto something else. It really is that simple. On the other hand, executives are clearly banking on a good old-fashioned recession to rein in the unruly and ungrateful employees.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  It's not just about RTO. The trend is bigger than that. It's just overall reality. If you need to go remote to fill a position then so be it. But some people have certain thoughts lodged squarely in their atrophied boomer brain about how everything has to be, no exceptions because feelings. The companies that don't have fog stuck in their head are going out and hiring remote and they have great cultures and are oozing productivity. That's the trend.

JoshTriplett 2y ago

> Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence In some cases, the pressure is also coming from external to the company, from cities and VCs and similar who care about the commercial real-estate value of now-abandoned offices.

kvmet 2y ago
Is this actually happening? I have seen this idea thrown out a lot online but it always feels like a conspiracy theory to me (akin to "fine art is a tax write-off")
- finnh 2y ago
  I think it explains some of Amazon's choices, as they made multibillion dollar bets on office space and real estate in Seattle.
  - coliveira 2y ago
    Yes, Amazon needs people to fill their expensive offices in Seattle, or otherwise explain to investors that they wasted billions of dollars building new offices that were used less than 5 years.
    - bruce511 2y ago
      >> otherwise explain to investors that they wasted billions of dollars building new offices that were used less than 5 years. So what? I mean companies write down things all the time. "We've revalued our $billion office and adjusted our balance sheet to match. Cause was a global pandemic which we considered as a risk factor in 2019, but it was negligible." Stock will drop a % or two for a week, then recover and move on (especially as the Amazon machine continues to print cash.) Microsoft wrote off the Nokia purchase with a shrug and the world just moved on. Explaining a change of work environment to investors seems like a pretty minor bump, not a major factor in decision making.

lowbloodsugar 2y ago

[flagged]

notyourwork 2y ago
I don’t follow the male, female, disabled person argument at all.
- lowbloodsugar 2y ago
  The canonical example would be it's hard to have a serendipitous conversation with your male colleagues in the mens restroom if you're female. That's the obvious one. Then we get to styles of conversation and engagement. I've had to defend promotions for female engineers from criticism based entirely on their communication. "She is not assertive enough." Ok, is she highly effective at her job? Yes. Ok, then what the fuck are we talking about? And always what we're talking about is men communicate a certain way, and women don't, and the men don't want to have to change. To answer the disabled question, there was a flight of stairs at the office, and the meeting would end and people would just head up the stairs. Except the dude in the wheelchair. I'm autistic and I have light sensitivity, and after a meeting in a nice bright window office, I am exhausted and don't want to engage in social rituals. My point is that the examples that tech leaders give as the reason to go back to the office are simply male social rituals, held up as "how we have good ideas and develop new hires". They're not. They are all managers performing post-hoc rationalization theater And if those were the goals, they'd figure out an effective way to meet them that's better than "chatting to john while taking a leak". And the most galling thing is that every single one of my most impactful career moments didn't involve having a serendipitous conversation. It involved researching things I was interested in. I am for nerds and against tech-bros.
  - notyourwork 2y ago
    I’m sorry but rude people exist everywhere and it’s not a tech thing. I’ve been in big tech for over a decade and I don’t have conversations in the bathroom. If you think WFH reduces these bro-relationships, you are being naive and they just become less accessible.

j45 2y ago

The issue seems to be less about wfh or not. It’s just how well does a company culture support distributed work (many locations) or not.

Arn_Thor 2y ago
“Company culture”… that’s the word they use for sure. Often it’s ego, sunk cost fallacies and other things that have to do with the culture in the C suite for sure. Pay people well and treat them with respect and you’ll end up with good and loyal employees, as always.

baxtr 2y ago

It’s unfortunate that it has gotten so black and white. I’m a big fan of WFH. But I also think it’s beneficial to see people in the office and interact on a regular basis. Why can’t we have both?

chii 2y ago
> Why can’t we have both? having both is equivalent to having WFH (but without the cost savings to the business regarding office rentals). People who want an office are likely doing so in the expectation that there'd be people there. What actually happens is that the office is semi-empty on most days, and you'd get a few ghosts here and there (unless there's mandated office days). So in the end, hybrid (without mandated days) is basically the same as WFH.
- matrix2003 2y ago
  I kind of think WeWork’s business model might have succeeded in the WFH post-Covid era. It allows the company to be flexible with meeting space budget without being on the hook for permanent space. My company ran out of space pre-Covid, so we would book random meeting spaces (within walking distance) around the city.
  - Hendrikto 2y ago
    There are companies that have pulled off We Work style office renting successfully for decades. Just without the crazy, megalomaniac founder CEO, without trying to spin it as being the savior of humanity, without a buttload of unrelated and extremely questionable side projects, without trying to sell it as a tech company and inflating the valuation to absurd levels.
    - baxtr 2y ago
      But did the founders of those companies become as rich as the WeWork founder?
- baxtr 2y ago

colechristensen 2y ago

Working in the office could be pretty nice with reasonable commute times and actual office space for employees. Like earning a top 10ish percent salary but the parking lot is full and people use bike locks on their office chairs so they don’t get stolen because they aren’t enough chairs. Give me an office with a door and a reasonable commute and I’ll be happy to go in to work every day. “Cost optimize” your office space until it’s hell for me and it’s a no until you double my salary. And cities don’t need to be designed like they are, seas of residential that are miles away from any workspace and all of the offices crammed together in unlivable downtowns that only have living spaces for single young people.

bruce511 2y ago
Yes, all this. I have a 5 minute commute, an office with a door, and plenty of parking. Going back to the office is no big deal (and has some major advantages.) But of course context will vary from one person to the next. Which is why sweeping generalizations is mostly fruitless. There are endless factors in play here on both sides of the table.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  If we could all be like executives and only come into the office when we feel like it unless it’s a rarely important occasion and have actual offices, it would be a much different game.