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The thing I keep coming back to here is how we all must sound to the janitors, security guards, baristas, etc, who can't ever work from home. I understand that

The thing I keep coming back to here is how we all must sound to the janitors, security guards, baristas, etc, who can't ever work from home. I understand that most of us worked our asses off to get to a skilled position and that in many ways it makes far more sense to be able to work from home. I myself am being dragged back into the office 5 full days a week and it's a 45 minute one way commute on a good day, so I'm salty about that. But hearing people who live 10 minutes from the office in $450,000 houses complaining loudly in the lobby about being forced back into the office right near the minimum wage security desk is a little uncomfortable.

jm20 2y ago
Never think that pure hard work leads to success, placement, privilege, or anything else. The farmhand in a field works harder than 99.9% of high paid tech employees. Hard work is important, sure, but it’s all about relative value contribution in the market, nothing else. It’s easy to find another farmhand, it’s hard to find another ML engineer
- thepuppet33r 2y ago
  I agree, and I've argued vocally against RTO from my privileged position because I have that value that makes me hard to replace. I just want to make sure that we're not forgetting the people who weren't able to become high-level ML engineers for various social and economic reasons and are locked into 10 hour hard days in person.
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago
    A lot of people bullied the ever hell out of the current ML engineers today. A lot of those bullies are only just now experiencing the economic effects of their actions from 10-30 years ago. Kids knew which kids they’d have to clean to the house of 20 years in the future and they intuitively want to knock those elite kids down a peg while they still can. Never forget the extreme resentment that those around nerds have for a nerds mind. When this country stops treating nerds like shit and celebrating anti-intellectualism, I’ll start being worried about the plight of the lowly security guard.
    - thepuppet33r 2y ago
      I'm sorry, it sounds like you had a really negative childhood, at least in regards to your relationships with some of your peers. I would argue that you, as the intellectual elite, are only leaning into and confirming their bias, and that perhaps a good way to begin to help reform the anti-intellectualism of America would be to try to have compassion for the people far beneath you, like the security guard. Otherwise, those people could have even greater anti-intellectual mindsets. It's also a little odd to me to be willing to persecute or punish through inaction adults for their actions as children.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
bbqfog 2y ago
We should all work to end exploitation and that starts with ourselves.
jimmygrapes 2y ago
Thank you. Truly.
sosodev 2y ago
Yeah, and if the homeless people outside the office heard the security guard complaining about their low pay imagine how they would feel. The “somebody has it worse” argument always ends up pushing people to accept getting screwed over.
- thepuppet33r 2y ago
  I'm not saying accept it. I am a vocal critic of the RTO policy at my work and have been for years. But keeping context and perspective is important. Even in your example, it would do the security guard some good to take a moment and be grateful that he does have that minimum wage job and a place to stay. It's not meant to encourage you to settle and get screwed over. It's meant to remind you of what you have and often those things should drive you to fight harder for other people and yourself.
  - jq-r 2y ago
    While I see your point I don’t think it’s a very useful one. It’s more productive to aspire for the betterment of your own/group’s position/circumstances than to compare how other groups have it worse. The latter just brings complacency, stagnation and maybe even regression because there is always someone who has it worse and so on and so forth.
    - christhecaribou 2y ago
      Agreed. Also, note many of these “founders” are mysteriously suddenly sympathetic to blue collar average joes when they never were before.
      - thepuppet33r 2y ago
        I mean, that occurs anytime these labor changes happen in general. Anytime they can appear to align themselves with workers while actually furthering their own ends, they will. Doesn't mean that advocating for blue collar workers is wrong just because the "founders" are doing it too. Instead we should actually hold them f-ing accountable to what they claim to believe and support when this happens.
xyzzy4747 2y ago
Do you consider $450k a lot for a house? That would hardly get you a shack in the Boston area.
- thepuppet33r 2y ago
  I'm in the Atlanta area, so that's mid to high for a smallish house, yeah. Or at least it was. Prices have short through the stratosphere recently. There are tiny little condos being built next to my office in northeast ATL that are going for a STARTING rate of over a million.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
I have no sympathy. America has made it so easy to convert hard work into a better job. Nowhere else on earth has it even close to this easy to literally pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Security guards are usually security guards because they want to be (most require a concealed carry license). I do not care if they think they are underpaid. They can always snap and go murder half the building. Id rather we didn’t even have a security guard, since the tweaker whod try to come into our building to do drugs is almost certainly not going to literally shoot the place up because overpaid tech workers were talking about not like RTO…
A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
I personally see WFH as a way to improve working conditions in general. Just because some jobs really need to be done in person does not automatically mean all of them should be. Similarly, not all should be RTO. As such, it is valid to point out ( and even complain ) that trying to apply 'one size fits all' RTO solution is silly at best. And just a point of perspective, it was only recently 40h a week ( 1940 ) and child labor (1938) was not considered some sort of communist plot intended to overthrow capitalism.
- thepuppet33r 2y ago
  Agree and agree. My point was more just being aware of how we sound to others who don't even have the opportunity we have. But maybe our vocal opposition can inspire them. I don't know. This is a very emotionally charged subject and maybe I should have kept my attempt at nuance to myself.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
    I think you have a very valid point here. Perception of the issue will likely carry the day eventually. Sadly, I am not the person to come up with a good slogan or decent marketing campaign. I just have rather strong feelings on the matter and am somewhat surprised how many people do not see the long term benefit.
aprilthird2021 2y ago
> how we all must sound to the janitors, security guards, baristas, etc, who can't ever work from home. Absolute bollocks. This is the Elon Musk screed and it's baseless. Do you think fast food workers gripe and moan when extremely well paid pilots or nurses go on strike? Every worker wants every other worker to succeed over management.
- christhecaribou 2y ago
  Exactly!!! So many Muskovites won’t shut the fuck up about the blue collar workers they never mentioned until now.
- rty32 2y ago
  Exactly. I would use the same logic and argue that it is not fair for CEOs flying in private jets when other workers commute in car traffic. If the day comes when Elon Musk, Andy Jassy and alike fly commercial, I wouldn't complain a word about going to office five days a week.
  - thepuppet33r 2y ago
    I also agree with this. They should have to fly commercial like the rest of us, but I can't control what they do.
- thepuppet33r 2y ago
  I think the thing I'm being accused of over and over here by people is that I'm pro-management and anti-labor. I'm not. I have repeatedly and continue to voice my opposition to RTO specifically, even directly to the VP. I can do this because if I get let go, I can easily find other work, and some of my coworkers can't due to restrictions on their lives. Elon Musk is a slimy snake that seems to be dead set on becoming a fascist dictator. No fan of him. Actively avoid his products. But it's odd that merely advocating for taking a moment and considering how we sound to others and maybe that their situation is different gets me lumped in with Musk. I didn't say "we all need to go back in the office in solidarity with the security guards." I was just saying I feel weird complaining about it around them. Yes, some minimum wage workers are there because they chose to be, but I don't believe for a second all people living a more difficult low-wage life are doing it because they failed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, as someone in a different comment said. America does everything it can to remove those bootstraps for less privileged people, and I'm just saying I think it's wise to consider that. We should all be working together against the corporate overlords and fight for better rights for all, up and down the chain. Let's just not think we deserve so much more than others while we do it.
tikhonj 2y ago
Eh, the difference is that for some roles being in-person is obviously necessary for the role while in others it isn't. Most people I know working in lower-level roles in-person recognize this because they've experienced more than their share of blatant management power games themselves. There's definitely a generational divide though. Older folks seem more likely to view being at the office as just a natural part of how work "works", while younger people are more likely to understand when it's necessary and when it isn't. It's a different story for lower-status jobs that could be done from home but aren't allowed. But when it's such a clear signal that you aren't trusted by management/society/etc, you really do have something to resent!
- thepuppet33r 2y ago
  So serious question: what are those lower-status jobs that could be done from home but aren't allowed? How can we help advocate for them alongside ourselves?
christhecaribou 2y ago
Your average blue collar workers benefits from the 300,000 corporate Amazonians working from home and staying off the road. He cannot avoid his commute, you can. And frankly, stop LARP-ing as a “sympathetic to blue collar work” person. God knows you’re probably an executive using them for messaging. When has anyone on HN ever given a fuck about blue collar workers until RTO, when these mysterious “sympathies” emerged? Of course we should support the working class, but you should’ve started a lot fucking sooner.
- thepuppet33r 2y ago
  Most of my siblings are blue collar workers. I'm one of two technology workers in my family, and I'm just a lowly Sysadmin. So I've always been concerned for them. But I understand your point.
nabakin 2y ago
I think the nuance here is while we should continue to push for WFH, we should also be aware of the feelings of people around us when we speak from our privileged position. This doesn't just apply to WFH, we should keep other people's feelings in mind when arguing from any position of privilege. Software developers are extraordinarily privileged and it's important to keep this in perspective or else we will contribute to a sense of disdain toward all software developers. Some will argue this is a talking point for anti-WFH people, but it's still a valid point to make independent of your WFH stance and as a general tip for being a decent, empathetic human being.
- thepuppet33r 2y ago
  Very well put, and yes, again: Not advocating against WFH, just trying to be aware that as we are fighting for it, there are those who will never have it.
neofrommatrix 2y ago
Yes; let’s do what the companies and billionaires want in solidarity with our blue collar worker peers. Let’s not stick together and work for the benefit of everyone. We should be demanding better conditions for everybody.
theshackleford 2y ago
> The thing I keep coming back to here is how we all must sound to the janitors, security guards, baristas, etc, who can't ever work from home. Every job has its perks and disadvantages. I don’t have the same perks my friends who are doctors have, so should they now give them up because it’s not fair to me because I’m not a doctor and don’t have them?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

jm20 2y ago

Never think that pure hard work leads to success, placement, privilege, or anything else. The farmhand in a field works harder than 99.9% of high paid tech employees. Hard work is important, sure, but it’s all about relative value contribution in the market, nothing else. It’s easy to find another farmhand, it’s hard to find another ML engineer

thepuppet33r 2y ago
I agree, and I've argued vocally against RTO from my privileged position because I have that value that makes me hard to replace. I just want to make sure that we're not forgetting the people who weren't able to become high-level ML engineers for various social and economic reasons and are locked into 10 hour hard days in person.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  A lot of people bullied the ever hell out of the current ML engineers today. A lot of those bullies are only just now experiencing the economic effects of their actions from 10-30 years ago. Kids knew which kids they’d have to clean to the house of 20 years in the future and they intuitively want to knock those elite kids down a peg while they still can. Never forget the extreme resentment that those around nerds have for a nerds mind. When this country stops treating nerds like shit and celebrating anti-intellectualism, I’ll start being worried about the plight of the lowly security guard.
  - thepuppet33r 2y ago
    I'm sorry, it sounds like you had a really negative childhood, at least in regards to your relationships with some of your peers. I would argue that you, as the intellectual elite, are only leaning into and confirming their bias, and that perhaps a good way to begin to help reform the anti-intellectualism of America would be to try to have compassion for the people far beneath you, like the security guard. Otherwise, those people could have even greater anti-intellectual mindsets. It's also a little odd to me to be willing to persecute or punish through inaction adults for their actions as children.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

bbqfog 2y ago

We should all work to end exploitation and that starts with ourselves.

jimmygrapes 2y ago

Thank you. Truly.

sosodev 2y ago

Yeah, and if the homeless people outside the office heard the security guard complaining about their low pay imagine how they would feel. The “somebody has it worse” argument always ends up pushing people to accept getting screwed over.

thepuppet33r 2y ago
I'm not saying accept it. I am a vocal critic of the RTO policy at my work and have been for years. But keeping context and perspective is important. Even in your example, it would do the security guard some good to take a moment and be grateful that he does have that minimum wage job and a place to stay. It's not meant to encourage you to settle and get screwed over. It's meant to remind you of what you have and often those things should drive you to fight harder for other people and yourself.
- jq-r 2y ago
  While I see your point I don’t think it’s a very useful one. It’s more productive to aspire for the betterment of your own/group’s position/circumstances than to compare how other groups have it worse. The latter just brings complacency, stagnation and maybe even regression because there is always someone who has it worse and so on and so forth.
  - christhecaribou 2y ago
    Agreed. Also, note many of these “founders” are mysteriously suddenly sympathetic to blue collar average joes when they never were before.
    - thepuppet33r 2y ago
      I mean, that occurs anytime these labor changes happen in general. Anytime they can appear to align themselves with workers while actually furthering their own ends, they will. Doesn't mean that advocating for blue collar workers is wrong just because the "founders" are doing it too. Instead we should actually hold them f-ing accountable to what they claim to believe and support when this happens.

xyzzy4747 2y ago

Do you consider $450k a lot for a house? That would hardly get you a shack in the Boston area.

thepuppet33r 2y ago
I'm in the Atlanta area, so that's mid to high for a smallish house, yeah. Or at least it was. Prices have short through the stratosphere recently. There are tiny little condos being built next to my office in northeast ATL that are going for a STARTING rate of over a million.

Der_Einzige 2y ago

I have no sympathy. America has made it so easy to convert hard work into a better job. Nowhere else on earth has it even close to this easy to literally pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Security guards are usually security guards because they want to be (most require a concealed carry license). I do not care if they think they are underpaid. They can always snap and go murder half the building. Id rather we didn’t even have a security guard, since the tweaker whod try to come into our building to do drugs is almost certainly not going to literally shoot the place up because overpaid tech workers were talking about not like RTO…

A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago

I personally see WFH as a way to improve working conditions in general. Just because some jobs really need to be done in person does not automatically mean all of them should be. Similarly, not all should be RTO. As such, it is valid to point out ( and even complain ) that trying to apply 'one size fits all' RTO solution is silly at best. And just a point of perspective, it was only recently 40h a week ( 1940 ) and child labor (1938) was not considered some sort of communist plot intended to overthrow capitalism.

thepuppet33r 2y ago
Agree and agree. My point was more just being aware of how we sound to others who don't even have the opportunity we have. But maybe our vocal opposition can inspire them. I don't know. This is a very emotionally charged subject and maybe I should have kept my attempt at nuance to myself.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
  I think you have a very valid point here. Perception of the issue will likely carry the day eventually. Sadly, I am not the person to come up with a good slogan or decent marketing campaign. I just have rather strong feelings on the matter and am somewhat surprised how many people do not see the long term benefit.

aprilthird2021 2y ago

> how we all must sound to the janitors, security guards, baristas, etc, who can't ever work from home. Absolute bollocks. This is the Elon Musk screed and it's baseless. Do you think fast food workers gripe and moan when extremely well paid pilots or nurses go on strike? Every worker wants every other worker to succeed over management.

christhecaribou 2y ago
Exactly!!! So many Muskovites won’t shut the fuck up about the blue collar workers they never mentioned until now.
rty32 2y ago
Exactly. I would use the same logic and argue that it is not fair for CEOs flying in private jets when other workers commute in car traffic. If the day comes when Elon Musk, Andy Jassy and alike fly commercial, I wouldn't complain a word about going to office five days a week.
- thepuppet33r 2y ago
  I also agree with this. They should have to fly commercial like the rest of us, but I can't control what they do.
thepuppet33r 2y ago
I think the thing I'm being accused of over and over here by people is that I'm pro-management and anti-labor. I'm not. I have repeatedly and continue to voice my opposition to RTO specifically, even directly to the VP. I can do this because if I get let go, I can easily find other work, and some of my coworkers can't due to restrictions on their lives. Elon Musk is a slimy snake that seems to be dead set on becoming a fascist dictator. No fan of him. Actively avoid his products. But it's odd that merely advocating for taking a moment and considering how we sound to others and maybe that their situation is different gets me lumped in with Musk. I didn't say "we all need to go back in the office in solidarity with the security guards." I was just saying I feel weird complaining about it around them. Yes, some minimum wage workers are there because they chose to be, but I don't believe for a second all people living a more difficult low-wage life are doing it because they failed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, as someone in a different comment said. America does everything it can to remove those bootstraps for less privileged people, and I'm just saying I think it's wise to consider that. We should all be working together against the corporate overlords and fight for better rights for all, up and down the chain. Let's just not think we deserve so much more than others while we do it.

tikhonj 2y ago

Eh, the difference is that for some roles being in-person is obviously necessary for the role while in others it isn't. Most people I know working in lower-level roles in-person recognize this because they've experienced more than their share of blatant management power games themselves. There's definitely a generational divide though. Older folks seem more likely to view being at the office as just a natural part of how work "works", while younger people are more likely to understand when it's necessary and when it isn't. It's a different story for lower-status jobs that could be done from home but aren't allowed. But when it's such a clear signal that you aren't trusted by management/society/etc, you really do have something to resent!

thepuppet33r 2y ago
So serious question: what are those lower-status jobs that could be done from home but aren't allowed? How can we help advocate for them alongside ourselves?

christhecaribou 2y ago

Your average blue collar workers benefits from the 300,000 corporate Amazonians working from home and staying off the road. He cannot avoid his commute, you can. And frankly, stop LARP-ing as a “sympathetic to blue collar work” person. God knows you’re probably an executive using them for messaging. When has anyone on HN ever given a fuck about blue collar workers until RTO, when these mysterious “sympathies” emerged? Of course we should support the working class, but you should’ve started a lot fucking sooner.

thepuppet33r 2y ago
Most of my siblings are blue collar workers. I'm one of two technology workers in my family, and I'm just a lowly Sysadmin. So I've always been concerned for them. But I understand your point.

nabakin 2y ago

I think the nuance here is while we should continue to push for WFH, we should also be aware of the feelings of people around us when we speak from our privileged position. This doesn't just apply to WFH, we should keep other people's feelings in mind when arguing from any position of privilege. Software developers are extraordinarily privileged and it's important to keep this in perspective or else we will contribute to a sense of disdain toward all software developers. Some will argue this is a talking point for anti-WFH people, but it's still a valid point to make independent of your WFH stance and as a general tip for being a decent, empathetic human being.

thepuppet33r 2y ago
Very well put, and yes, again: Not advocating against WFH, just trying to be aware that as we are fighting for it, there are those who will never have it.

neofrommatrix 2y ago

Yes; let’s do what the companies and billionaires want in solidarity with our blue collar worker peers. Let’s not stick together and work for the benefit of everyone. We should be demanding better conditions for everybody.

theshackleford 2y ago

> The thing I keep coming back to here is how we all must sound to the janitors, security guards, baristas, etc, who can't ever work from home. Every job has its perks and disadvantages. I don’t have the same perks my friends who are doctors have, so should they now give them up because it’s not fair to me because I’m not a doctor and don’t have them?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]