The complete lack of foresight, in the year 2020, was a spectacular thing to behold. I'm glad I was alive to witness it. The currency of the word 'pandemic' was cashed in full.
Good. This remote work revolution has had a dramatic effect on diversity in a positive way. My company’s learnings have been that it’s easier to hire a diverse workforce remotely, and our revenue and margin numbers have never been higher.
We’ve gone from “oh it’s our culture, we can’t wait to get everyone back in the office” to realizing we had hired almost half of the current employees in the company since the pandemic started so we moved on to consolidating office leases.
There is no going back to the “old ways” because we had simply grown too much for anyone but the tenured folks to remember. And we can grow faster because we’re primarily remote — we plan to hire about 2,000 people next year, 50% more than we had planned pre-pandemic (which should be a huge red flag for anyone looking to force employees back — they’re not bluffing about remote jobs being plentiful and we have lower overhead so we pay more.)
All of our work is collaborative. It’s actually far easier to be collaborative at scale if everyone is virtual; just the only baseline anyone had was when the bosses and half the workers were in the same room. Sure, the bosses felt good, but half your team was underutilized. The collaboration angle is absolute BS.
> we had simply grown too much for anyone but the tenured folks to remember
The institutional memory part fascinates me. Currently, some people lament the lack of proverbial BSing around the water cooler. In a few years, nobody will even know that was a thing or at least a thing that was valued.
Honestly? My relationships with coworkers and employees is way better remotely because I have to make a conscious effort to get to know them. I can’t rely on the lazy solution of passively seeing someone every day.
This was the main argument against social networking back in the day. "If I want to talk to someone, I'll pick up the phone and have a quality conversation." People are abandoning Facebook for a number of poor product and business decisions on Facebook's part, but we did learn that there's a difference between the opt-in and opt-out communication channels.
That’s exactly why I left social media about 5 years ago. I realized I wasn’t actually friends with anyone who popped up on my timeline; they were all just people I used to know posting imaginary versions of their lives. Facebook deludes you into thinking you have friends when what you really have is a void to shout your feelings into and hope someone listens.
After working remotely for 5 years, it would take an extremely special team and compensation to draw me back into an in-person role. I live in a medium-sized town and would be hard-pressed to relocate at this point. The local tech scene just can’t compete with remote salaries, and life without a commute is just too good. I’ve had enough happy hours and office snacks for one lifetime.
My sentiments exactly. The extra couple of hours a day in commute time / getting ready alone is worth it. I can immediately jump off my computer at 5 and book, I'm with my kids.
Not to mention, I'm already making near Silicon Valley numbers, so why the heck would I switch?
> The extra couple of hours a day in commute time / getting ready alone is worth it.
It's not just the hours, but the amount of stress that has been released. I don't have to worry about getting a ticket, getting in a fender-bender, getting stuck in traffic, having to refuel, having to take the car in for maintenance more often, or having to stare at the same dumb ads. That stress is just gone. For unrelated reasons I drove down my old commute recently was struck by how little I missed that particular routine.
I work at a startup born during Covid that has never had an office. Everyone is effective, collaboration is good, and we are getting great traction. No need for an office and the company recognizes that fortunately.
We have lost several staff - mostly younger ones - by going remote first. Although we kept our office locations, they have downsized dramatically and few people use them. They usually feel very empty. However trying to unbake that loaf would, I am certain, drain even more staff, perhaps even an order of magnitude more.
My company is going back to the office two days of the week out of five. I can choose to go back three and get a reserved seat, which is weirdly tempting. I hate the idea of having to find a temporary seat.
But it's also tempting to just work from home, something they allow individuals to do on request. They used to be pretty relaxed about allowing that, and if there's one thing COVID has taught me it's that everyone's jobs still get done even without having to mingle in an office together. But who knows, maybe they're cutting that avenue off now, I haven't checked.
My commute was pretty annoying pre-COVID -- between 1.5h to 2h of driving a day was common. I don't miss that at all. That's time for reading, time for playing with the dog or the rabbits, time for cleaning the horrible mess my fiancee makes when cooking dinner. I've found it a lot harder to keep up with podcasts now, though ...
Everyone is hopeful about continuing remote work in the comments, but my job isn’t allowing that option to anyone. I want to maintain remote work, but it’s not possible to shift atm, in my current situation, and the commute would be over an hour.
Let's be honest. Without accountibility from co-workers/managers, there will be people that will spend more time doing other things other than work, like browsing HN and commeting on a post.
19 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 76.0 ms ] threadWe’ve gone from “oh it’s our culture, we can’t wait to get everyone back in the office” to realizing we had hired almost half of the current employees in the company since the pandemic started so we moved on to consolidating office leases.
There is no going back to the “old ways” because we had simply grown too much for anyone but the tenured folks to remember. And we can grow faster because we’re primarily remote — we plan to hire about 2,000 people next year, 50% more than we had planned pre-pandemic (which should be a huge red flag for anyone looking to force employees back — they’re not bluffing about remote jobs being plentiful and we have lower overhead so we pay more.)
All of our work is collaborative. It’s actually far easier to be collaborative at scale if everyone is virtual; just the only baseline anyone had was when the bosses and half the workers were in the same room. Sure, the bosses felt good, but half your team was underutilized. The collaboration angle is absolute BS.
The institutional memory part fascinates me. Currently, some people lament the lack of proverbial BSing around the water cooler. In a few years, nobody will even know that was a thing or at least a thing that was valued.
Not to mention, I'm already making near Silicon Valley numbers, so why the heck would I switch?
It's not just the hours, but the amount of stress that has been released. I don't have to worry about getting a ticket, getting in a fender-bender, getting stuck in traffic, having to refuel, having to take the car in for maintenance more often, or having to stare at the same dumb ads. That stress is just gone. For unrelated reasons I drove down my old commute recently was struck by how little I missed that particular routine.
But it's also tempting to just work from home, something they allow individuals to do on request. They used to be pretty relaxed about allowing that, and if there's one thing COVID has taught me it's that everyone's jobs still get done even without having to mingle in an office together. But who knows, maybe they're cutting that avenue off now, I haven't checked.
My commute was pretty annoying pre-COVID -- between 1.5h to 2h of driving a day was common. I don't miss that at all. That's time for reading, time for playing with the dog or the rabbits, time for cleaning the horrible mess my fiancee makes when cooking dinner. I've found it a lot harder to keep up with podcasts now, though ...
Disappointed to say the least.