More than anything else I'd want better equipment than I have at home - i.e. an ultra-wide monitor, simple USB-C docking, good noise-cancelling headphones and a good microphone or headset and webcam, a US-layout ISO keyboard, a comfortable chair, an adjustable standing desk, etc.
And then food, coffee, etc. to provide the same amenities as at home.
Right now I'd have to pay about $8 a day and 45 minutes each way to commute to the office and then ~$18 a day on food if I don't prepare it before. To then use inferior equipment than I have at home - why would anyone want that?
I would love to see data comparing reluctance to go (back) to the office versus things like commuting mode of transportation (walking, cycling, transit, commuter rail, driving) and/or commute time.
Just personal anecdotal data. The main factors for me are just general flexibility and commute. I used to commute 30m-1hr one way. So that's anywhere from 1-2h a day I'm getting back right at the start. Then flexibility: being able to get chores done, run an errand, take a walk, etc. This actually ends up giving me even more time back. I can work when I'm productive. Output is the same, but I'm not forced to pretend to work for 8 hours. It just makes so much more sense. If my office was 5 minutes away and I could still do all of these things without the social pressures, I might consider it.
> Car commuters miss commuting the least: 55% of this group do not miss it at all. Commuters by (e-)bicycle are the group who miss commuting the most, with 91% missing at least some aspects of commuting. As might be expected, the feeling of missing commuting also decreases with increasing commute duration (Fig. 5).
> The connection between work and commuting is evident in the relationship between missing commuting and the intention to work from home in the future (Fig. 7). Among those who do not miss the commute at all, 72% express desire to work more from home in the future. Among those who miss commuting a lot, 69% would like to go back to their previous work routine.
This matches the numbers that have been reported in Norway as well, where the percentage that miss their commute are roughly 80% for pedestrians/cyclists, 50% for public transport and 30% for driving (https://www.nrk.no/norge/blir-palagt-hjemmekontor-_-mange-sa... in Norwegian)
Never thought about it this way, but my bicycle commute has always been 30-45 minutes and that's why I'm leaning 60-70% towards "I don't miss it". If it was only 20mins door to door I guess that would be different.
You get hotel death at home. At the office you meet a lot of nice people. You get mental peer support: "oh it sucks for them too? I'm not the only one. Maybe it's not so bad." I find those days are best for going to the office when I have the least meetings, and I can just have ad hoc encounters. Even our CEO so fondly speaks of those. "Oh, you thought that we should do X too? I thought I was the only one!" Ultimately you can experience consilience.
I don't try to write that much or have meetings at the office as those are much easier to do at home.
Not satire. My company at least really has a lot of nice people. Also my other jobs have been like that. The same has happened to me at university or school. Not all people are nice but you don't then need to always spend so much time with those.
Most people are neither nice nor interesting. Generally the response to this is "get to know them better", which is tedious as it implies everything is nice as long as you know enough about it. This is also not true.
There is a lot more value in having good, supportive friends. Those you can choose.
Consider that the world has introverts and extroverts. Consider also that your job is something you spend the majority of your waking hours doing. Consider then that the extroverts might prefer that to have some level of socialization.
The extroverts have been made quite aware of how the introverts prefer things to be in the past few years, and may now be aware that the extroverts had the upper hand before.
It must be feasible to strike a decent middleground.
The middle ground is having extroverts socialise somewhere where it's not a demand that inflicts harm on other people. Where folks can be of their own free will.
You’re asking a portion of the population that thrives on socialization to avoid that for the majority of the day. That is just as bad as insisting on forcing that on the introverts.
No one is asking that. They are asking that they not be dragged into the office in order to fill someone else's need for socializing at the expense of their own we'll being. If other people want to work at the office more power too them, but if not enough people want an to be in the office to fill their need for socializing, they are being asked to find it elsewhere instead of trying to force everyone else to fill their needs.
I don’t think you appreciate how bad full remote work can be for someone that thrives on having people around them.
But I do appreciate the point you make here, asking others to do something they don’t appreciate just because you want to have people around, is not really a viable solution either.
Then again, humans are intrinsically social animals. And communication does work better for some purposes when done in person. The point I’m trying to raise is that there should exist a decent middle ground that lets introverts and extroverts thrive in the same companies. Possibly by asking both to give a bit.
But that point is somewhat incompatible with the “full remote is the way”-stance that seems to be very popular in at least a vocal part of crowds like HN.
A middle ground is to not expect in office work and to structure things accordingly (that means e.g. meetings needs to treat people dialling in on an equal footing, always). I don't mind if others go in to the office. I mind if I'm made to.
But it's also not nearly as simple as you suggest. My girlfriend is very extrovert, but still also prefer mostly working from home, because while she can socialise a little bit while working it forces her to socialise with a small set of people she has not chosen, while robbing her of extra time (the commute) that she can use to socialise with those she has chosen.
Fair enough, but then again if one is to spend a certain large part of one’s day doing something, shouldn’t that be something one enjoys to some degree? And the degree of socialization might matter for the judgement of that.
I.e. if you don’t like your colleagues, perhaps a new job is in the cards. (and yes, i do get the entire point about reducing the number of hours worked as a solution)
The degree of socialization might matter, but it may also not, including for many extroverts.
And changing jobs for the sake of changing colleagues is high risk - you don't get a chance to interview all your colleagues before taking a new one. It's not even necessarily about not liking them, but about not wanting to sacrifice extra time in order to spend more time face to face with them.
Hmm yes maybe it doesn't exist as-is in English. It's when you just stay at the hotel room alone or with a very small company of people. One would think it'd be nice with no chores etc. But people actually tend to find it very unpleasant after a while.
People like rock stars have something like this and then it increases the likelihood of substance abuse.
This sounds really bogus to me. On the one hand you pick days with few meetings so you can go hang out and have "ad hoc encounters"; on the other hand, you write and have meetings at home because they're so much easier to do at home.
What is unfair? That in office people get knowledge and discussions that WFH don’t?
If so, how is it any fairer to level the playing field to the point where nobody gets that? (No, it will never have the same flow virtually, over the past two years it’s become clear that virtual meetings are always formal to some degree)
I don’t get any hotel death at home. I’ve become closer to my neighbors and people I pick to be with, not people I’m forced to be with. I don’t want to hear Bob’s stories from 1980 about some Pontiac he used to own and how fast he was and how cool he felt for 20hs a week because he can’t get a clue.
I get soul death being prisoner in a fluorescent tube jail that keeps me away from the sun all winter and barely lets me see it during the rest of the year.
Yeah, I think this is a pandemic-triggered "unbundling" of lots of things that were previously forced together. People may or may not like their office or their co-workers; they may not be comfortable with the level of micromanagement there; but almost nobody likes commuting.
I wonder if this is how the reaction to absurd real estate prices is playing out.
Maybe 5. I'm already doing 6 at home, and don't have to commute, so. 6h days in the office is equivalent to 7-8ish (depending on commute times) hours of me not being able to do anything but work. If they covered the other things like I mentioned, then maybe that'd be okay. But otherwise, I need the extra hours to get my shit done and have the free time I want. At the end of the day, I don't want to give up more than 6 total hours of my life per day to my job.
1) excellent ventilation: clean air. This has become an important topic lately and the importance will not diminish. If you're going to share space with dozens of people, who almost all interact with others at home as well, then find ways to minimise the spread of germs (of which COVID-19 is just one). Coming in saying "it's just a cold" is no longer OK. I don't care how mild your case is, that might not apply to people that you transmit it to, so just don't.
2) a locker to keep some stuff (a nice keyboard, a warm top, etc)
That's the biggest inefficiency about in-office work. Its irreplaceable time lost for the employees, the company and the society. We are needlessly hauling people from place to place to have them work at the cost of losing time and resources.
For me it would be: Once a month or twice a month we have dedicated inperson time (no teams/zoom). If you need to travel we pay accommodations and travel.
For me: I like to be in the office max 2 days a week but commute is the deal breaker. Culture can be achieved without fixed days but dedicated days.
For my part: Pay me for the commute, let me come in and leave outside of rush hours, and give me an individual office OR accept that any time in the office will be mostly social / catch up's rather than productive time.
If you want me there more than a couple of days a week, you need to pay even more above the commute, as it also costs me flexibility.
Nothing would make me come back. I'm a contractor, which makes my approach a bit easier, but last year I realized that my main client was going to fail in their effort to get people to return to the office, and I just moved overseas. Since then I've just spent my time travelling around, working from basically any place I want. Even with the travel, my living expenses have plummeted, and I now pay 0% income tax, which has almost doubled my income. My clients would have to more than double my remuneration for me to breakeven on returning to the office, and even then I wouldn't be prepared to give up the new lifestyle.
Nonsense. There are plenty of governments that offer 0% income tax, in either all circumstances, or some more limited set of circumstances, and I am now a tax resident of one of those. I would have some level of tax burden at home if I happened to be a citizen of one of the two countries in the world that taxed all of their citizens worldwide income, but I am not, so I don't.
My home government even has a tax treaty with my current country of residence that guarantees they will make no attempt to tax my income as long as I am a tax resident here.
In addition to the existing 0% tax countries, a number of countries have now started offering visas that come with either 0% or a very low tax on foreign income, specifically to attract remote workers. It's really quite simple to situate yourself to pay no taxes as a remote worker. Nearly every country in the world allows their citizens to move their tax residency to another country. You only have to worry about bending the rules if you don't actually leave the country who's tax system you're trying to escape.
For me it would be 50-100k per year extra after tax. This way i would accept office work for the next 5 years and than just quit socieity with the saved money.
Buy myself my farm i want without credit and than only working smaller remote jobs for social security and health care and upkeep but also only 20h or less
For me: either a 100% raise, or a 30% raise + my own private office with a door that closes. I can't imagine the company will benefit enough to justify these costs.
The only reason I am going to the office is because it allows me to separate home (and relaxation), and work. Context switching is very important for mental well-being.
Plus being at work allows me to fast which assists in weight loss.
I have lunches and breakfasts(which becomes my second breakfast) in the office which is a great addition to what you said. I also have good air conditioning there(important in Europe since they don’t have it at homes here). I also like just being in the city.
I feel like a loud group of people is always saying “offices are obsolete since I don’t need them!”
Not sure where you're thinking, but in central Europe AC is actually really rare. I'm not sure I could name more than 1 or 2 friends who have one, and it's usually some portable unit and not something installed. Doesn't matter if house or apartment, rented or owned.
Not central Europe. I'm in Croatia and everyone I know has it. I have it in every room (split units), and have had it in every rented apartment since I stopped renting student accommodation.
I'm not saying it's prevalent everywhere in Europe, I'm saying that it's a bad generalisation because it varies a lot within Europe.
More like all the countries where you simply don't need one, because 30° used to be a very hot day and not the norm. Not the one who originally posted, I probably would have clarified "most of Europe", going by population. (I really do wonder about the south of France...)
It's weird to pretend that the USA suddenly inverted the control structure and employees in the general case can now dictate these things to their employer.
"You work from the office or you don't work here" seems to be about as effective as ever. Some people will have alternatives and will use them; most won't.
Granted, I've worked remotely for 22 years so maybe I missed the memo.
It's reported largely by talking to privileged workers, like people in tech or finance, where having the financial means to play hard ball over this is much more likely than average. As someone who can dictate this, it's easy to get lost in this bubble and forget that most people have far less power over their work life.
Tech yes, finance no. There are 50 people ready to take any finance job that is vacated by a fired WFH’er. Tech has had a scarcity of talent versus demand, finance not. Same with law and consulting. This new wave of firings might do the same thing to tech.
As usual it depends on level and specific job function, as well as where you are, but overall it does not just matter whether you can easily find a job right now, but how likely you are to have a cushion that lets you afford to test the limits.
> "You work from the office or you don't work here" seems to be about as effective as ever.
You can fire people who aren't willing to come back to the office, certainly.
But if 30% of your workforce would rather find a different job than return to the office, firing them all might inhibit your ability to get things done.
Seriously. Give me back an office with a door, or at the very least give me a comfortable space (ie not sweatshop layout or huge cube-farm) and I'm back to the office in an instant. I'm old enough to remember when I could focus _better_ in my tech office than I can at home...
This is the problem. The pandemic hit at the apex of companies doing stupid things with their office space. Now we need that pendulum to swing back with more space and privacy, but with opportunities for easy impromptu meetups and culture creation by being in the same spaces physically.
When looking for a new job at the tail end of last year, I flat out told recruiters I would require an offer that fully accounted for the commuting time and cost in the salary if anyone wanted me in the office. Otherwise there was nothing in it for me. Want me in the office 5 times a day? At the high end of what I'd consider a tolerable commute, that'd be 25%-30% higher base salary than the already high amounts I were asking for.
Really, I should have been asking for more, as losing that much spare time would matter, but I mostly made the demand expecting it to be rejected.
Unsurprisingly I ended up rejecting a few companies who wanted me in the office at least part of the week but were unwilling to pay for the time they expected me to give up and the costs I'd incur. Instead I ended up taking a salary increase to work 100% remote.
Employers may be able to force those who are powerless and in weak bargaining positions back in, but in tech enough of us still have enough options that trying to force people back in will cause companies doing it to lose a lot of the very people who are experienced enough to find it easiest to move.
It's the same for me. It's all about the commute. I don't know what the best solution is but going back to 2+ hours a day in a car on congested roads and highways isn't it. As much as I like my colleagues and current job, going back to that commute grind throws it all out the window.
I live in france, and I spent several years without a job because of depression, lack of motivation, lack of degree and experience as a C++ developer.
Those years taught me to live with little money. Here in in france every unemployed citizen can get welfare since 1989, it's a low amount of money but it's enough.
So when I found work, I managed to save a lot of money (less than 10k), because I did not change my lifestyle: no heating in the south of france, eating cheap, no travel, no car, no gadgets.
Of course the jobs I got were either for training or trial periods, so I always end without a job.
To be really honest, the antiwork movement is quite a revelation for me. I don't feel like I must beg for a job. It feels so good. I can still live without working, and it helps a lot to negotiate the work I want to do.
Besides rent, it is difficult to make this work in the United States, because important things like healthcare is tied to your employer, no employment means either no or very expensive private healthcare insurance :(
There is a minimal retirement pension in France even if you've never worked in your life, which is OK if you live frugally, don't have to pay rent, or have some previous savings (or a combination of those).
TIBCO is offering a weird deal in France: they are asking employees to choose between 100% or 0% remote work. Either everyone come back full time in the office, or there is no office left. Employee representatives have proposed to move to smaller offices but this option was declined.
I don't mind going into the office but it has to be about connecting with people in person. I see no benefit of commuting if I have to sit on remote calls all day - I can do that more effectively from home.
I avoid remote meetings during my in-office days so I can focus on productive gatherings like whiteboarding sessions, ad-hoc conversations, coffee/tea/lunch breaks etc. In other words, relationship building.
Yup, hybrid meetings have to go. Either full in office or full remote, hybrid just removes the benefits of the in office bit, while leaving the remote side potentially left behind in side discussions.
No, hybrid means that you get none of the communications benefits of being in the same room, unless you inconvenience the remote part by having side discussions.
Once you level the playing field there, you might as well have the meeting full remote, as you can’t cash in the benefits of being in person without inconveniencing the remote crowd. So the optimal hybrid meeting is in fact not hybrid.
That can be a plus. Just yesterday we've seen on HN someone's story about hiring 5 people to watch over his shoulder so he can focus on his work [1]. Coworkers do that for you for free.
Company culture” is just another way for the corporation to control you. If you make work friends, then you have an intangible benefit that makes quitting harder.
I think people will come back to the office when they feel that their jobs are in danger. Those who come back to the office are setting themselves apart from those who work from home, and the work from home crowd is getting isolated. IMHO eventually employers will see which employees they should invest in in which they should let go.
> IMHO eventually employers will see which employees they should invest in in which they should let go.
A yes company loyalty.
Unless you are talking about small family business, the only loyalty companies have is to shareholders and investors, believing otherwise is setting yourself up for a bitter surprise.
I find it a bit daunting when management theorists and business school types talk about “having the right culture” as if it’s a tangible thing that can be “installed” or changed at the will of management. Organizations are made of people and the behaviours and actions of those people make up what most people might perceive as culture. But it’s not something management can install in order to get people back into the office. It can be put on PowerPoint slides and company screensavers, yes, but it can’t be “deployed” or “changed” like most MBA schools would like us to believe. At least not until we develop telepathy skills.
One point about remote work, versus in-office work, that rarely gets brought up is that remote work promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion.
You get to work with people who live across the country, or across the world, with all of the variety of culture that brings. Plus, you get to work with people from rural areas, for whom big-city jobs would otherwise be infeasible.
The more flexible working arrangement is good for women with young children, some of whom would otherwise leave the workforce entirely for a few years. (It's good for men with young children, too, but they are less likely to leave the workforce over it.)
It's also good for people with disabilities -- both those that impair mobility and those with chronic conditions.
Diversity in the abstract has no intrinsic benefits. A dozen red roses is no more or less beautiful than roses of many colors. A set of heterogenous things is not intrinsically more valuable than a set of homogenous things.
BUT when it comes to diversity of representation, there is a justice angle. My guiding principle is that when the diversity of a workforce does not match the diversity of its surroundings, that is a problem, because it suggests that people are being filtered out for some reason other than their relevant abilities. Maybe that reason is systemic bias, or maybe it's direct bias on the part of the company. But somewhere in the process, there's an injustice taking place.
I used to work for a company that was much more white, male, and otherwise homogeneous than the city in which it was located. And the company was worse off for it. There was a lot of groupthink. There was a lot of what I'd call TDD (testosterone-driven development). And people complained about there being a monoculture. The more homogenous the company became, the harder it became to attract qualified people who didn't fit the mold.
UNC and Harvard both argued before the Supreme Court in 2022 that their anti-Asian racism is for “diversity”.
A lot of people are dishonest about that, but the people who crow about “diversity” consistently engage in racialized language — and discrimination based on race, such as discrimination against Asians at those universities. (You can see GP works himself around to the racial angle by the end.)
I didn’t put any words in GPs mouth:
I pointed out he’s using the language of modern bigots, such as those at Harvard and UNC.
You are commenting on a case that is still open, and while you seem squarely in favor of SFFA, their claims are far from being validated (they’ve been rejected by lower courts up to this point)
What I find interesting in particular from those lawsuits: one of the main argument was the representation of Asians being lower than “white” ethnic groups adjusted for selected academic achievements. That basically goes against your thesis, as doing that intentionally would lower diversity.
Yet, we are talking about a real barrier for many kinds of people that was suddenly lifted, and people are still making an effort to classify the people that pointed "hey, there was a barrier here" as racist.
People are not making an effort to classify the people that pointed out that there was a barrier as racist. They are making an effort to classify people that are currently saying “hey there IS STILL a barrier here and the best or only way to demolish it is by looking at a person’s skin color” as racist. And they are definitionally correct.
> My guiding principle is that when the diversity of a workforce does not match the diversity of its surroundings... it suggests that people are being filtered out for some reason other than their relevant abilities.
No it doesn't.
That's only true if all demographics have equal ability and interest in that workforce.
Would you care to share what classes of people lack ability in software engineering, which is a relatively high-paying job?
Any racial or ethnic groups? Men/women? Veteran status?
If you're not willing to name which purported classes of people have low ability in this area, I don't think it's worthwhile to entertain your line of argument.
If 80% of the doctors in an geographical area belong to race B then about 80% of doctors should be of race B. Assuming everyone is roughly of equal ability/experience and no hiring biases are at play. Imbalances need to be measured against the population of doctors, not the general population.
The question should be why few people of a particular race go to medical school. The biases need to be addressed at the root. If you focus your bias search at the end-leaf points you are making a blunder. A blunder that can even hurt people for the opposite reasons because there are "too many" of race X relative to local population. Some minorities (Asians) are negatively affected by this lazy anti-bias action.
Okay, which classes of people aren't interested in a relatively cushy, relatively high-paying job?
Are blacks and Hispanics, underrepresented in tech, just not interested in programming, or is there maybe a chance that they have the same ability and interest, but less access? Overt discrimination does not even need to exist here, but if there are systemic factors that disadvantage some demographic groups, that can also affect access.
No, it isn't "vastly different levels of interest" it's straight up racism. Racist housing policies discriminated against PoC specifically, and many of these bylaws are still on the books. Housing policies are relevant because the largest component of wealth is homeownership [1], and wealth is the largest indicator in educational attainment. The best schools and educational opportunities have historically been kept from PoC in a very explicit manner. It's no coincidence that the best schools are almost always in the wealthiest neighborhoods that aren't very diverse.
They only make up 1.17% of the undergraduate population enrolled in a CS major.
Either a disproportionately low number of African American undergrads are choosing to enroll in CS majors (interest), or universities are disproportionately refusing to enroll such students (in which case your argument about racism may have some merit).
Do you have any evidence that universities are refusing to allow African American students to enroll in CS?
Your own link states that most (72%) black students received Pell Grants — grants that are given based on financial need. As cited in my previous comment, the wealth gaps created by racist housing policies can be across generations. It was less than a generation ago that computers commonly cost 5-figures, and remained expensive until relatively recently.
A good proxy is to look at the continued gap in broadband internet adoption by race, which is also linked to income. PoC are less likely to have a broadband connection at home, and relying more on their smartphone/tablet devices [1]. Educational attainment is also linked to broadband adoption [2]. Historically students haven't been learning to code/coding on their smart devices.
That is false, and you know it to be false. My claim is that they are choosing not to enroll in CS programs, i.e., that they have less interest in CS programs.
You dispute my claim, by which it must necessarily follow that they are somehow disproportionately prevented from enrolling despite wanting to enroll. Where is your evidence of that?
>My claim is that they are choosing not to enroll in CS programs
You're the one with the baseless claim that black people as an entire cohort have "vastly different levels of interest" in CS. I provided several reasons and citations that they're still facing the consequences of systemic racism, and that it's not really a "choice" or "interest".
Your continued claim offers nothing other than conjecture without critical thinking as to why this is happening, despite having evidence presented to you. You provide nothing to backup your claims, yet demand that others offer evidence for claims they never made.
You're now trying to move goalposts towards by only looking at the university level when that was never my argument, and shows you're not trying to argue in good faith.
> when the diversity of a workforce does not match the diversity of its surroundings, that is a problem, because it suggests that people are being filtered out for some reason other than their relevant abilities. Maybe that reason is systemic bias, or maybe it's direct bias on the part of the company. But somewhere in the process, there's an injustice taking place.
Is this true for the workforce in professional sports?
Ask the question in reverse: as an extreme, if you could set the rules and material conditions to participate, could you come up with a sport that will filter out most members of specific parts of the population ?
Well anything that requires strength and speed will filter out all females, and most males. Which is what we see in professional sports that are open to all genders.
You could argue a particular race is extremely underrepresented in professional basketball and American football. How many Asians do you see in the NBA or NFL?
As an Asian myself, I have no problem admitting most Asian males simply don’t have the ideal physique to be competitive at the pro level at these sports. You might have extreme outliers like Yao Ming, but that’s exactly what he is - an extreme outlier. Far fewer - extremely fewer, Asian males are likely to have the ideal physique to be a NBA or NFL player than say, Whites or Blacks.
From a strictly capitalist perspective: because the ability to develop solutions that eventually make a lot of money have to apply to problems that exist in global markets, and having people from a variety of cultures and backgrounds directly working on those solutions gives you a competitive advantage because of the organization's now broader understanding of those problems.
One of the things even Marx praised about capitalism (vs. feudalism and mercantilism) was exactly this notion that the needs of capital and competition means protectionist and xenophobic tendencies would eventually get pushed aside.
Lack of diversity in your company can result in bugs in your product when unrepresented types of people use your product, presumably leading to reduced profits.
It's not so much that it is not possible to address any given issue in a different way. E.g. they could have tested the soap dispenser with different skin tones.
Rather the issue is that a team is more likely to realize issues caused by interaction between a product and various groups if those groups are part of the team working on the project. It's a discoverability issue.
A company needs employees who are likely to think about the issues, and while most of it can be learned, in practice those who try to depend on this as a means to catch these issues, or try to make it an appointed role, tend to fail.
A more diverse workforce is not enough, but it very much tends to challenge assumptions that would otherwise get made without a second thought.
To take a trivial example, I'm Norwegian, and over the years I've lost count of the number of times I've had to explain even the most basic internationalisation requirements to English-speakers who somehow manage to even think about basic character set considerations, much less transliteration (Håkon transliterates to Haakon - å -> aa, æ -> ae, ø -> oe -, except when Scandinavians have learnt that some places they run into problems unless it's transliterated Hakon, so good luck doing a string comparison of names reliably), language differences (assuming no need to make different recordings for dates for an IVR system and you can just reuse the ordinals? except when you can't; surely there's a default, "safe", clearly dominant language for each country that you can use without pissing anyone off? and so on).
And that's between similar cultures and closely related languages, and ignoring cultural expectations outside of a European heritage.
Was the soap dispenser sensor built in zoom meetings? Otherwise maybe this doesn’t demonstrate diversity’s essential utility, eg in discussion of remote work’s merits, but merely its application to certain cases
While it may be too blunt of a tool to address the core systemic causes of issues like inequality of opportunity and discrimination, it is a relatively simple way to mitigate their effects. E.g. long term we should try to make sure that the hiring process does not discriminate against various groups, but in the short term making sure that you have at least some of each group helps mitigate any problems.
Having diverse team may allow a team to develop a wider range of potential solutions to problems.
Having a diverse team may help avoid unanticipated interactions between a product and different groups of people. E.g. facial recognition software that doesn't work well on people with dark skin.
As an electric-type Pokemon (aka a minority), I'd prefer it if people didn't tailor their demeanor towards me and their hiring/firing decisions about me based on my type but rather on my abilities. Let's not forget that Pikachu starts with a normal type ability and isn't only able to learn electric type moves. Build your team based on ability, not Pokemon type, especially when there isn’t even a good correlation between Pokemon type and ability and ability can be inspected directly. Stereotyping about a person's ability based on their skin color is similarly bigoted.
And try not to use a =) when endorsing racism so openly.
How did this suddenly get into racism? Gen Z would call that a "chronically online take", how else would someone get from a silly analogue of Pokémon types and abilities into racial issues?
Of course people are hired for their ability, their background is just the bonus. And again, background isn't the same as skin colour, that's an American thing. Europeans judge people based on what country people are from, not based on their skin colour - we have a long tradition in doing so. =)
Don’t play coy. You know and I know that diversity discussions are always a thinly veiled proxy for talking about race-based decisions (or gender/LGTBTQ+). The person I originally responded to literally gave an example of dark skin impacting facial recognition.
Variety of point of views brings opinions you may not have, had you been uniquely surrounded by people that have been through similar experiences to you.
In my experience I've seen it impacting product decisions, pricing decisions, and engineering decisions.
What I see with hiring has nothing to do with diversity of opinion, it's about hiring enough of protected classes to avoid lawsuits.
I would love to hear how companies can interview for deep differences in thinking. Doing that in a way that would not risk lawsuits from the interview process (asking about personal religion or neurodiversity), of course.
The parent comment gave a number of specific examples why remote work benefits various people. Those points still stand regardless of the "diversity" label.
Most obvious reason is that ecosystems are most resilient when diversified. Supporting diversity as an aspect of culture, especially at scale, has many benefits, including: equality, alternative perspectives, economic resilience & performance, opportunity & threat awareness, geographical risk management, respect for diversity in nature, multilingual capacity, cultural awareness, etc.
(responding to this statement, and this statement only):
When creating systems, using a diverse array of standards instead of just one creates problems. For example: using metric units and imperial units. Heterogeneity in standards is desired in those circumstances.
When collaborating: having a diverse array of cultural norms can cause friction when people interpret phrases as pleasant vs passive aggressive.
When designing corporate identity: a diverse set of art-styles would likely give a muddled or non-professional look of a company. (though in certain circumstances this can be desirable if you are going for an "indy" look).
Agree, there clearly exceptions, though issue is that each of those situations either has a reasonable resolution or that lack of diversity just postpones cultural conflicts among cultures. Basically, if lack of inclusion issue for significant subset of a population, then it’s an issue. If there two cultures that are naturally wholly independent of each other, attempting inject diversity is clearly flawed. On the flip side, unable non-statistically significant diversity would lead to a chaotic state. Basically, there’s no optimal state, but a diverse system will always outperform a heterogeneous or chaotic system on average, only edge cases that are the exception.
>>Basically, there’s no optimal state, but a diverse system will always outperform a heterogeneous or chaotic system on average, only edge cases that are the exception.
China’s rise as a superpower would seem to directly contradict your statement. It seems like the truth is the opposite of what you say: a heterogenous system will always outperform a diverse/chaotic system unless there are edge cases which introduce shocks to the system.
China is only heterogeneous in name, it’s not in practice. Case in point, China’s response to Covid over time, both at the national level and on a case by case basis.
The are no global systems of governance that are wildly adhered to which are actually literal forms of anarchy; anarchy being the common description on a chaotic system of governance.
Those are things. It’s kind of arguing that you don’t want flour in your salt. Purity is fine for things.
> When collaborating: having a diverse array of cultural norms can cause friction when people interpret phrases as pleasant vs passive aggressive.
This is a positive aspect if you get to learn from that and communicate in a way that is better understood in non-homogeneous groups. Think a space station shared between countries. Or a town office that needs to regularly communicate with the general public.
You will also be saved from further issues if you were ready from the start to deal with an array of cultural norms, instead of assuming a single culture and later realize that people came from a much more complex background than you imagined.
> corporate identity
That’s an interesting one. It’s a thing, but then people are working for that corporation. Having an identity strongly anchored in a single specific culture (let’s go for the worst: your PR department shares articles of the CEO hunting elephants. Or your whole company site is in Rococo style) will be detrimental compared to a bland, very generic and more embrassing identity.
idk, I feel like we're talking about "Diversity" as a concept, I accidentally answered without any context w.r.t. the rest of the discussion and just kind of left it (with a little disclaimer in parens).
> > When collaborating: having a diverse array of cultural norms can cause friction when people interpret phrases as pleasant vs passive aggressive.
> This is a positive aspect if you get to learn from that and communicate in a way that is better understood in non-homogeneous groups.
This largely depends, if you want global domination of a product then sure, but if you're a bunch of tool makers and you all know your audience of tool users then there's no benefit at all to have someone offended by the word "tool" in your workforce.
Regarding corporate identity: I've always been against the whole "bring your entire self to work" ideology that seems to have come out of Google. That only works if you have a heterogeneous idea of where things are going, otherwise you just lose yourself to infighting and disenfranchisement.
Better: Have a strong corporate image, then people will self-select if they can stomach what your company stands for. To be honest I was talking about branding anyway, but since you mentioned people anchoring themselves to a corporate identity then it opened my eyes to a bigger need for heterogeneity in that environment.
> if you're a bunch of tool makers and you all know your audience of tool users then there's no benefit at all to have someone offended by the word "tool" in your workforce.
It kinda reminds me of the factorygirl -> factorybot [0] story. It was a cute enough name for a technical tool that plays nice among bros, and down the line you end up renaming your package and deal with the drama.
On brand image, I get your point. I think the corporations doing it best tend to juggle with multiple brands and segment their market accordingly. Then yes, an homogeneous, single focus brand will be more valuable, as it also help to push people outside of the target to your other brands.
This misunderstands diversity (and to some extent ecosystems and evolution) quite a bit in the context of a business. When a business is competing on ideas (aka most businesses) the relevant type of diversity that breeds resilience is not the superficial things (skin color, gender, disability status, etc), it's diversity of actual ideas and that really needs to be layered on top of both extreme competence and be present in an environment that strongly supports sharing those diverse ideas. I don't see any of that in the way diversity is currently being practiced, it looks very much like an oppressive mono-culture, which is extremely fragile.
While I believe I understand your point, to me it pretends there is no link between culture that supports and understands diversity in general or among physical traits, ideologies, etc — and one the embraces diversity of ideas. Issues you raise is more about how compliance is not the same thing as diligence, which is only observable if culture fails to be diligent or never intended to be so.
I think the disagreement and/or misunderstanding is around the incorrect assumption that diversity policies are promoting diverse ideas via increasing hiring of different cultures rather than promoting diversity of outward appearance while enforcing a mono-culture via intolerance of ideas that clash with a broad narrative that tends to be pushed by the people pushing these policies (i.e the people who read and support the LA times writing an article about how Larry Elder is the black face of white supremacy). I also personally think it's weird to talk about a culture failing or not, it's the individual that matters as far as competency is concerned, which certainly makes it the relevant data point for a business.
Policies by definition are a compliance mechanism, they are not means of breeding true diligence. Said another way, there are no laws for the crimes that are never committed. At the point policies are reflection of diligence, it would be clearly be false to claim skills gained implementing culture of diligence in some aspects of diversity would not be transferable to another domain of diligence in diversity; in fact, referenced this via “respect for diversity in nature” when I listed benefits of diversity. Benefits are unrelated to implementation flaws, edge cases, etc.
Rereading your previous response and this one, I missed a key point. I don't pretend there is "...no link between culture that supports [removed because this part isn't true about current people driving diversity pushes] among physical traits,[again removed for untruth] etc — and one the embraces diversity of ideas." I actively acknowledge there is a link and it is resoundingly in the negative direction because the people currently pushing diversity are overwhelmingly doing it for ideological reasons using extremely inappropriate tools like critical theory rather than doing it for great reasons like increasing productivity by fully utilizing previously underutilized labor. They are not looking for diversity of ideas, they are actively pushing for compliance with their world view and crushing dissent.
I am not sure where you are trying to go with your commentary on diligence vs compliance, it doesn't seem particularly relevant and is concerningly Orwellian in that you seem to be saying people need to internalize hiring based on immutable characteristics to ensure those characteristics are represented rather than on competency. I don't want anyone to internalize any of that. I want diversity policy to be a bit of a pain in the ass that forces potentially biased people to try and choose the best they can from a severely underrepresented subset and then watch that choice do well and therefore help them re-calibrate their internal model to not miss out on quality hires outside their experience set. The goal should never be to diligently hire diversity, the goal should always be to help hiring managers trying to do their best improve.
Compliance is a checklist, diligence is an intent based on an action objective by a skill practitioner; common example being “Security by compliance” - which is taken as a negative practice and one that’s done to meet the letter of the objectives, not the spirit of them, if such a spirit is definable.
And yes, much like technology, it’s up to people to insure abuse doesn’t happen. Much likely I said before, there’s reason diversity is an issue, clear examples of abuse from minor to horrific, and very unlikely there’s an optimal solution.
That said, I feel exactly confident in saying that currently that inequality, diversity, etc — are still major cultural issues in almost any region in the world; in some countries, inhospitable towards foreign cultures is the norm, not the exception.
People with different backgrounds offer different solutions to problems. This is an objectively good thing.
Invisible Women[0] is an excellent book on the subject with multiple anecdotes and hard statistical data on how having diverse people making decisions is good for business.
One other benefit of remote work that doesn’t get talked about as much is that it makes harassment harder, and any harassment is likely to leave more of an electronic evidence trail.
Good one, harassment is in the face tho, records would also diminish talking shit behind peoples back. Records would keep us honest about policy, protocol, law and they make it harder to agree to cut corners. It enforces professionalism.
Having been harrassed by a group of colleagues during covid, it felt worse in person but it was also easier to circumvent and defend in the office. The distance to changing team was shorter in the office, since I had the opportunity to network while at work. Remote work means you mostly talk to the same people.
Another example of that, not related to harrassment:
First time I spoke to someone who had once spoken to a customer was 7 months into a job, during my first in-office lunch break. It is amazing that companies can be "customer and usability driven" yet almost make a deliberate effort to prevent programmers from talking to end users. Being in office actually got me closer to customers (being able to talk to sales and support without scheduling a meeting).
IANAL, but the question on my mind is this: can you just record the stream, especially if the app (like Zoom) has a clear indicator visible to all participants that it is being recorded?
And double especially if you're in a one-party consent state?
Any lawyers willing to chime in?
Another option comes to mind, namely a preemptive "I record all my videos for reference." I can imagine some businesses having a problem with that for secrecy reasons, though.
In combination with the person typing to participate in the meeting, this may be more accessible than having to have a sign translator in the meetings with you all the time.
I hope the quality of transcription will increase.
Nowadays in Switzerland there are four different languages: English, French, German and the Swiss-German dialect which is different enough to warrant a separate speech-to-text training, which will be a bit difficult because every valley has its own variant of the dialect.
This is currently a serious barrier. For example at Youtube, if people talk Swiss German Youtube identifies it as Spanish, Dutch, Ukrainian or English, I have seen it all.
If I would need to do remote work, I would look for an international company where the office language is strictly English.
The hypocrisy is in hiring people in far away timezones from each other and then pretending that "being in the office is better."
Since you have to communicate via chat and email to keep everyone "together" it stops mattering that you're in the same building as someone. The guys in the US, Belgium and India will almost never be in the room with me and we have to make a team of it despite that.
Personally, I think the commute is wasted time and (a lot of) money. I get to take my daughter to school, to collect her and to spend time with her before she goes to sleep and I am not giving that up without a fight. Try to force me and I'll try to find another job and there are plenty on offer.
I do agree about saved personal time and it has been great for that, but having somebody in person on a meeting, or quick chats/questions about design, code, testing, business etc. is significantly more effective than endless calls. Having big time zones difference means consistently having those questions unanswered for hours/a day instead of 10 seconds.
The very same reasons why outsourcing was consistently a fail before covid and ended up costing more with inevitable reversals. What kind of worked was near shore, ie cca same time zone, and less savings. But good luck getting that accepted by MBAs.
Sure, I rely on chat - it helps everyone because as good as an instant reply is, it interrupts people a lot. Chat is the best compromise for me. Calls are for serious "we must work together" things.
Working with people overseas is just tricky. China is much too far from my timezone - that' nearly impossible. The Indians I work with put up with very odd hours to be part of our team. It's hard to keep them - they frequently get better offers and leave. The guys in the US are east coast which is not so bad but it makes meetings difficult.
I don't really know how a company like mine could totally avoid being global so to an extent we just have to make something work.
In my last office job I could never get any work done during the day because it was all interruptions and people making use of their ability to "just have a moment." I'd stay till 10pm to do the actual programming. Nowadays with a family that just isn't going to happen so I like a bit of distance.
I think it's useful to meet people once or twice at least - that has turned out to be very good in my experience.
I honestly appreciate being forced to communicate asynchronously. Write shit down. Document it. Iterate on it. Turn what used to be referred to as "organizational knowledge" into a literal product that doesn't just exist in the ether as some sort of right-of-passage or job security perk for senior employees.
Well, a one-off pizza party certainly does not work. Regular free and quality food is surely a nice perk though. At our place we have free lunch from Tuesday to Thursday, otherwise nobody is pushed to work in the office. Some people still come in often partly for the free food, partly to socialize during lunch. Some people are not motivated by it, and that's OK too.
> 4) My own private office. With a door. A fancy door with with my name on it. The kind that detectives used to have in old movies.
I know you may kid with the tail end of that but this is a key thing for engineers for focus time. Open office floor plans are the opposite of what is needed. Reference is PeopleWare by DeMarco & Lister.
I think remote working, at least at the team/department level, is kind of like virtual vs in-person meetings: you can have an effective virtual meeting or you can have an effective in-person meeting. You cannot have both at the same time — either the people meeting in-person will just stare at their Zoom/Teams/WebEx/etc. window or the virtual attendees will be left out of some part of the meeting experience.
Companies - or at least teams within companies - self-selecting into in-person or remote organizations seems like the best outcome to me. This will probably happen at the whim of management, but maybe also because of the relative preferences of the dominant talent pool they need to attract. I just wonder how much pain and suffering everyone is going to have to endure to figure this out and get there.
The problem of that thinking is that a single remote-only-possible person pushes the team to remote-only.
I however, 100% agree with the statement that conferences are problem (1) for coming back to the office AND (2) is the fact that commute times were given back to the life of people (and their kids, partners, hobbies, communities, ...) and now people ask to invest that time back to the company.
That’s my point - some people want[0] to work in-person and some want to work remotely. There are plenty of jobs and places for each, but trying to mix them together on a single team is never going to work. So don’t try. Setup your team to be unapologetically in-person, with all the baggage that entails: loss of commute time, lack of ability to recruit geographically distant workers, possibly more streamlined real-time collaboration, etc. or setup your team to be remote with all the baggage that entails: lower overhead, hire the best talent anywhere in the world, better focus on deep work/asynchronous communication, probably weaker team bonds, inability to just get in a room and figure something out quickly, etc.
Greefield / New Formed Teams: I agree 100%. Was not that the Stripe Engineering story before Pandemia. Two remote divisions and one in office? But brownfield with an existing organization: That does not work. What if you have a team with two key people. One who only wants to work remote and one who does not. Then you have a multi-month knowledge transformation ahead if you, if possible at all.
I feel like this is being made out to be a much bigger deal than it is, both by the (rather hyperbolic) article and in general. If you want to go back, go back. If you don't, then don't. If you want a mixed model do that. Be you an employer or employee. You may need to change jobs/staff to get what you want. That's life. That always has been.
I recommend people compare the commutes of people making the decisions, to the commutes of people suffering the consequences of those decisions.
The key people have plenty of money and tend to live near the city center, their commute is 15 minutes in their car to a dedicated spot in the company garage.
The workers have little money, live in the suburbs and their commute takes an hour. Plus they have to pay for either public transit or parking.
What for? Why are they want us back in the office? I can't see what benefits we (i mean the company and me) will have by working in the office? Yes there are the extraverts and people with professions those have to be in the office/specific workspace. But why moving each and everyone back into office?
My theory is that it's similar to why they do team-building exercises: they want employees to be friends with each other, because it promotes retention. Are you going to leave a job where you know everybody for a complete unknown for a 20% raise? Will you even start looking around? They could accomplish the same thing by paying above-average, but obviously everybody can't do that and anyway team-building once a quarter is cheaper.
Then again, office space is super-expensive and if they can actually reduce (or eliminate) the amount of office space because of WFH that would be a huge savings. But not every company can do that (yet).
Working from home means a private office- an invaluable potentially distraction free environment for a programmer. And during meetings, a private conversation if needed without having to find a meeting room (that’s likely mostly glass). I am finding this often makes collaboration easier then when in the office- where I feel bad about distracting others nearby if I work with someone at their desk.
Companies chose to make every office an open office and I wonder how much the work from home phenomenon is a vote against this with the feet.
I'm sure if push came to shove I would figure it out but on a surface level I have no idea how I would make returning to the office work with kids. Wife drives to work and only gets home around 6:30. Kid 1 has school from 7:50 to 2:15. Kid 2 is 9:20 to 3:55. I assume I would have an hour commute as I live in the suburbs. So I would have to leave at 8 and wouldn't get home until at least 6 assuming I was the guy that was running out the door at 5 everyday. Kids also have sports at 4:30 twice a week.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 246 ms ] threadAnd then food, coffee, etc. to provide the same amenities as at home.
Right now I'd have to pay about $8 a day and 45 minutes each way to commute to the office and then ~$18 a day on food if I don't prepare it before. To then use inferior equipment than I have at home - why would anyone want that?
I would love to see data comparing reluctance to go (back) to the office versus things like commuting mode of transportation (walking, cycling, transit, commuter rail, driving) and/or commute time.
In theory I should do some sort of exercise (like cycling around) when working from home, but realistically that hardly ever happens.
https://urbanstudies.uva.nl/content/blog-series/covid-19-pan...
This matches the numbers that have been reported in Norway as well, where the percentage that miss their commute are roughly 80% for pedestrians/cyclists, 50% for public transport and 30% for driving (https://www.nrk.no/norge/blir-palagt-hjemmekontor-_-mange-sa... in Norwegian)
I don't try to write that much or have meetings at the office as those are much easier to do at home.
is this satire? many office people are "nice to your face"
There is a lot more value in having good, supportive friends. Those you can choose.
The extroverts have been made quite aware of how the introverts prefer things to be in the past few years, and may now be aware that the extroverts had the upper hand before.
It must be feasible to strike a decent middleground.
You’re asking a portion of the population that thrives on socialization to avoid that for the majority of the day. That is just as bad as insisting on forcing that on the introverts.
But I do appreciate the point you make here, asking others to do something they don’t appreciate just because you want to have people around, is not really a viable solution either.
Then again, humans are intrinsically social animals. And communication does work better for some purposes when done in person. The point I’m trying to raise is that there should exist a decent middle ground that lets introverts and extroverts thrive in the same companies. Possibly by asking both to give a bit.
But that point is somewhat incompatible with the “full remote is the way”-stance that seems to be very popular in at least a vocal part of crowds like HN.
But it's also not nearly as simple as you suggest. My girlfriend is very extrovert, but still also prefer mostly working from home, because while she can socialise a little bit while working it forces her to socialise with a small set of people she has not chosen, while robbing her of extra time (the commute) that she can use to socialise with those she has chosen.
I.e. if you don’t like your colleagues, perhaps a new job is in the cards. (and yes, i do get the entire point about reducing the number of hours worked as a solution)
And changing jobs for the sake of changing colleagues is high risk - you don't get a chance to interview all your colleagues before taking a new one. It's not even necessarily about not liking them, but about not wanting to sacrifice extra time in order to spend more time face to face with them.
Is that some idiom? You mean like isolation sickness?
People like rock stars have something like this and then it increases the likelihood of substance abuse.
I do not get any 'magic' office knowledge in the office.
And frankly its unfair anyway.
If so, how is it any fairer to level the playing field to the point where nobody gets that? (No, it will never have the same flow virtually, over the past two years it’s become clear that virtual meetings are always formal to some degree)
I get soul death being prisoner in a fluorescent tube jail that keeps me away from the sun all winter and barely lets me see it during the rest of the year.
I wonder if this is how the reaction to absurd real estate prices is playing out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0Mkx7qtlwM
1) excellent ventilation: clean air. This has become an important topic lately and the importance will not diminish. If you're going to share space with dozens of people, who almost all interact with others at home as well, then find ways to minimise the spread of germs (of which COVID-19 is just one). Coming in saying "it's just a cold" is no longer OK. I don't care how mild your case is, that might not apply to people that you transmit it to, so just don't.
2) a locker to keep some stuff (a nice keyboard, a warm top, etc)
That's the biggest inefficiency about in-office work. Its irreplaceable time lost for the employees, the company and the society. We are needlessly hauling people from place to place to have them work at the cost of losing time and resources.
It is just hard to compete with: no travel time, the comfort of your own home and food, an no one looking over your shoulder all the time.
If you want me there more than a couple of days a week, you need to pay even more above the commute, as it also costs me flexibility.
Showers,
Spices and a place to cook the days i'm not at the gym,
Office with doors (idc if i have to share it with one or two coworkers),
Less than 20 minutes commute by bike,
Double screen (as i can bring my mouses and keyboards, but not my computer screens).
Almost assuredly you are now accruing a huge debt to one or more governments. It’s not an if, but when.
My home government even has a tax treaty with my current country of residence that guarantees they will make no attempt to tax my income as long as I am a tax resident here.
In addition to the existing 0% tax countries, a number of countries have now started offering visas that come with either 0% or a very low tax on foreign income, specifically to attract remote workers. It's really quite simple to situate yourself to pay no taxes as a remote worker. Nearly every country in the world allows their citizens to move their tax residency to another country. You only have to worry about bending the rules if you don't actually leave the country who's tax system you're trying to escape.
Buy myself my farm i want without credit and than only working smaller remote jobs for social security and health care and upkeep but also only 20h or less
I agree though putting up with commuting again would need to be well rewarded.
Plus being at work allows me to fast which assists in weight loss.
I feel like a loud group of people is always saying “offices are obsolete since I don’t need them!”
I’d add that the commute, especially on foot if feasible, is a great way to relax.
I wouldnt say that if i was driving, but i am in Europe so mass transportation alleviates the issue.
People say the strangest things here...
I'm not saying it's prevalent everywhere in Europe, I'm saying that it's a bad generalisation because it varies a lot within Europe.
"You work from the office or you don't work here" seems to be about as effective as ever. Some people will have alternatives and will use them; most won't.
Granted, I've worked remotely for 22 years so maybe I missed the memo.
You can fire people who aren't willing to come back to the office, certainly.
But if 30% of your workforce would rather find a different job than return to the office, firing them all might inhibit your ability to get things done.
Really, I should have been asking for more, as losing that much spare time would matter, but I mostly made the demand expecting it to be rejected.
Unsurprisingly I ended up rejecting a few companies who wanted me in the office at least part of the week but were unwilling to pay for the time they expected me to give up and the costs I'd incur. Instead I ended up taking a salary increase to work 100% remote.
Employers may be able to force those who are powerless and in weak bargaining positions back in, but in tech enough of us still have enough options that trying to force people back in will cause companies doing it to lose a lot of the very people who are experienced enough to find it easiest to move.
Those years taught me to live with little money. Here in in france every unemployed citizen can get welfare since 1989, it's a low amount of money but it's enough.
So when I found work, I managed to save a lot of money (less than 10k), because I did not change my lifestyle: no heating in the south of france, eating cheap, no travel, no car, no gadgets.
Of course the jobs I got were either for training or trial periods, so I always end without a job.
To be really honest, the antiwork movement is quite a revelation for me. I don't feel like I must beg for a job. It feels so good. I can still live without working, and it helps a lot to negotiate the work I want to do.
i think that's the main thing that makes it difficult to just go off the grid for me.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices_by_city.jsp?dis...
When you get old, you cannot work anymore, not even that much.
Although, both (rent and retirement) can be achieved with some abuse of the social benefits in france.
I am curious to see how this will end.
I avoid remote meetings during my in-office days so I can focus on productive gatherings like whiteboarding sessions, ad-hoc conversations, coffee/tea/lunch breaks etc. In other words, relationship building.
One, or the other, but not hybrid.
Full office and full remote are easier.
Once you level the playing field there, you might as well have the meeting full remote, as you can’t cash in the benefits of being in person without inconveniencing the remote crowd. So the optimal hybrid meeting is in fact not hybrid.
at home, i can manage my time and my environment, i'm comfortable.
That can be a plus. Just yesterday we've seen on HN someone's story about hiring 5 people to watch over his shoulder so he can focus on his work [1]. Coworkers do that for you for free.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34657478
A yes company loyalty.
Unless you are talking about small family business, the only loyalty companies have is to shareholders and investors, believing otherwise is setting yourself up for a bitter surprise.
You get to work with people who live across the country, or across the world, with all of the variety of culture that brings. Plus, you get to work with people from rural areas, for whom big-city jobs would otherwise be infeasible.
The more flexible working arrangement is good for women with young children, some of whom would otherwise leave the workforce entirely for a few years. (It's good for men with young children, too, but they are less likely to leave the workforce over it.)
It's also good for people with disabilities -- both those that impair mobility and those with chronic conditions.
Diversity in the abstract has no intrinsic benefits. A dozen red roses is no more or less beautiful than roses of many colors. A set of heterogenous things is not intrinsically more valuable than a set of homogenous things.
BUT when it comes to diversity of representation, there is a justice angle. My guiding principle is that when the diversity of a workforce does not match the diversity of its surroundings, that is a problem, because it suggests that people are being filtered out for some reason other than their relevant abilities. Maybe that reason is systemic bias, or maybe it's direct bias on the part of the company. But somewhere in the process, there's an injustice taking place.
I used to work for a company that was much more white, male, and otherwise homogeneous than the city in which it was located. And the company was worse off for it. There was a lot of groupthink. There was a lot of what I'd call TDD (testosterone-driven development). And people complained about there being a monoculture. The more homogenous the company became, the harder it became to attract qualified people who didn't fit the mold.
The people who talk like this argued that Asians don’t deserve equal admission to Harvard or UNC because there’s “too many”.
I think that kind of racism is disgusting — choosing people based on skin color is horrific.
A lot of people are dishonest about that, but the people who crow about “diversity” consistently engage in racialized language — and discrimination based on race, such as discrimination against Asians at those universities. (You can see GP works himself around to the racial angle by the end.)
I didn’t put any words in GPs mouth:
I pointed out he’s using the language of modern bigots, such as those at Harvard and UNC.
What I find interesting in particular from those lawsuits: one of the main argument was the representation of Asians being lower than “white” ethnic groups adjusted for selected academic achievements. That basically goes against your thesis, as doing that intentionally would lower diversity.
Yet, we are talking about a real barrier for many kinds of people that was suddenly lifted, and people are still making an effort to classify the people that pointed "hey, there was a barrier here" as racist.
The rhetoric of this thread is amazing.
No it doesn't.
That's only true if all demographics have equal ability and interest in that workforce.
Any racial or ethnic groups? Men/women? Veteran status?
If you're not willing to name which purported classes of people have low ability in this area, I don't think it's worthwhile to entertain your line of argument.
The question should be why few people of a particular race go to medical school. The biases need to be addressed at the root. If you focus your bias search at the end-leaf points you are making a blunder. A blunder that can even hurt people for the opposite reasons because there are "too many" of race X relative to local population. Some minorities (Asians) are negatively affected by this lazy anti-bias action.
If you aren't going to engage honestly, don't engage at all. There's no place on HN for that kind of behavior.
Are blacks and Hispanics, underrepresented in tech, just not interested in programming, or is there maybe a chance that they have the same ability and interest, but less access? Overt discrimination does not even need to exist here, but if there are systemic factors that disadvantage some demographic groups, that can also affect access.
There are some universities where enrollment in certain majors is competitive, but they are the exception, not the rule.
So yes, I'm inclined to believe this is indicative of vastly different levels of interest.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Nationally-the-number-of...
[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disp...
https://pnpi.org/black-students/
They only make up 1.17% of the undergraduate population enrolled in a CS major.
Either a disproportionately low number of African American undergrads are choosing to enroll in CS majors (interest), or universities are disproportionately refusing to enroll such students (in which case your argument about racism may have some merit).
Do you have any evidence that universities are refusing to allow African American students to enroll in CS?
A good proxy is to look at the continued gap in broadband internet adoption by race, which is also linked to income. PoC are less likely to have a broadband connection at home, and relying more on their smartphone/tablet devices [1]. Educational attainment is also linked to broadband adoption [2]. Historically students haven't been learning to code/coding on their smart devices.
Lack of access is not lack of interest.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/16/home-broadb...
[2] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/files/uploadedf...
Do you have any evidence at all for your claim that universities are refusing to enroll African American students in CS programs?
You dispute my claim, by which it must necessarily follow that they are somehow disproportionately prevented from enrolling despite wanting to enroll. Where is your evidence of that?
You're the one with the baseless claim that black people as an entire cohort have "vastly different levels of interest" in CS. I provided several reasons and citations that they're still facing the consequences of systemic racism, and that it's not really a "choice" or "interest".
Your continued claim offers nothing other than conjecture without critical thinking as to why this is happening, despite having evidence presented to you. You provide nothing to backup your claims, yet demand that others offer evidence for claims they never made.
You're now trying to move goalposts towards by only looking at the university level when that was never my argument, and shows you're not trying to argue in good faith.
I'm done.
As an Asian myself, I have no problem admitting most Asian males simply don’t have the ideal physique to be competitive at the pro level at these sports. You might have extreme outliers like Yao Ming, but that’s exactly what he is - an extreme outlier. Far fewer - extremely fewer, Asian males are likely to have the ideal physique to be a NBA or NFL player than say, Whites or Blacks.
Do I see a problem with this? Not at all.
https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-da...
Rather the issue is that a team is more likely to realize issues caused by interaction between a product and various groups if those groups are part of the team working on the project. It's a discoverability issue.
A more diverse workforce is not enough, but it very much tends to challenge assumptions that would otherwise get made without a second thought.
To take a trivial example, I'm Norwegian, and over the years I've lost count of the number of times I've had to explain even the most basic internationalisation requirements to English-speakers who somehow manage to even think about basic character set considerations, much less transliteration (Håkon transliterates to Haakon - å -> aa, æ -> ae, ø -> oe -, except when Scandinavians have learnt that some places they run into problems unless it's transliterated Hakon, so good luck doing a string comparison of names reliably), language differences (assuming no need to make different recordings for dates for an IVR system and you can just reuse the ordinals? except when you can't; surely there's a default, "safe", clearly dominant language for each country that you can use without pissing anyone off? and so on).
And that's between similar cultures and closely related languages, and ignoring cultural expectations outside of a European heritage.
While it may be too blunt of a tool to address the core systemic causes of issues like inequality of opportunity and discrimination, it is a relatively simple way to mitigate their effects. E.g. long term we should try to make sure that the hiring process does not discriminate against various groups, but in the short term making sure that you have at least some of each group helps mitigate any problems.
Having diverse team may allow a team to develop a wider range of potential solutions to problems.
Having a diverse team may help avoid unanticipated interactions between a product and different groups of people. E.g. facial recognition software that doesn't work well on people with dark skin.
If you only have electric-type Pokémon, you can theoretically beat every Pokémon Gym.
But it's a lot easier if you have a _diverse_ set of Pokémon with different abilities. =)
And try not to use a =) when endorsing racism so openly.
How did this suddenly get into racism? Gen Z would call that a "chronically online take", how else would someone get from a silly analogue of Pokémon types and abilities into racial issues?
Of course people are hired for their ability, their background is just the bonus. And again, background isn't the same as skin colour, that's an American thing. Europeans judge people based on what country people are from, not based on their skin colour - we have a long tradition in doing so. =)
In my experience I've seen it impacting product decisions, pricing decisions, and engineering decisions.
What I see with hiring has nothing to do with diversity of opinion, it's about hiring enough of protected classes to avoid lawsuits.
I would love to hear how companies can interview for deep differences in thinking. Doing that in a way that would not risk lawsuits from the interview process (asking about personal religion or neurodiversity), of course.
Why would diversity not be good?
(responding to this statement, and this statement only):
When creating systems, using a diverse array of standards instead of just one creates problems. For example: using metric units and imperial units. Heterogeneity in standards is desired in those circumstances.
When collaborating: having a diverse array of cultural norms can cause friction when people interpret phrases as pleasant vs passive aggressive.
When designing corporate identity: a diverse set of art-styles would likely give a muddled or non-professional look of a company. (though in certain circumstances this can be desirable if you are going for an "indy" look).
China’s rise as a superpower would seem to directly contradict your statement. It seems like the truth is the opposite of what you say: a heterogenous system will always outperform a diverse/chaotic system unless there are edge cases which introduce shocks to the system.
The are no global systems of governance that are wildly adhered to which are actually literal forms of anarchy; anarchy being the common description on a chaotic system of governance.
Those are things. It’s kind of arguing that you don’t want flour in your salt. Purity is fine for things.
> When collaborating: having a diverse array of cultural norms can cause friction when people interpret phrases as pleasant vs passive aggressive.
This is a positive aspect if you get to learn from that and communicate in a way that is better understood in non-homogeneous groups. Think a space station shared between countries. Or a town office that needs to regularly communicate with the general public.
You will also be saved from further issues if you were ready from the start to deal with an array of cultural norms, instead of assuming a single culture and later realize that people came from a much more complex background than you imagined.
> corporate identity
That’s an interesting one. It’s a thing, but then people are working for that corporation. Having an identity strongly anchored in a single specific culture (let’s go for the worst: your PR department shares articles of the CEO hunting elephants. Or your whole company site is in Rococo style) will be detrimental compared to a bland, very generic and more embrassing identity.
>Those are things.
idk, I feel like we're talking about "Diversity" as a concept, I accidentally answered without any context w.r.t. the rest of the discussion and just kind of left it (with a little disclaimer in parens).
> > When collaborating: having a diverse array of cultural norms can cause friction when people interpret phrases as pleasant vs passive aggressive.
> This is a positive aspect if you get to learn from that and communicate in a way that is better understood in non-homogeneous groups.
This largely depends, if you want global domination of a product then sure, but if you're a bunch of tool makers and you all know your audience of tool users then there's no benefit at all to have someone offended by the word "tool" in your workforce.
Regarding corporate identity: I've always been against the whole "bring your entire self to work" ideology that seems to have come out of Google. That only works if you have a heterogeneous idea of where things are going, otherwise you just lose yourself to infighting and disenfranchisement.
Better: Have a strong corporate image, then people will self-select if they can stomach what your company stands for. To be honest I was talking about branding anyway, but since you mentioned people anchoring themselves to a corporate identity then it opened my eyes to a bigger need for heterogeneity in that environment.
It kinda reminds me of the factorygirl -> factorybot [0] story. It was a cute enough name for a technical tool that plays nice among bros, and down the line you end up renaming your package and deal with the drama.
On brand image, I get your point. I think the corporations doing it best tend to juggle with multiple brands and segment their market accordingly. Then yes, an homogeneous, single focus brand will be more valuable, as it also help to push people outside of the target to your other brands.
[0] https://github.com/thoughtbot/factory_bot/wiki
I am not sure where you are trying to go with your commentary on diligence vs compliance, it doesn't seem particularly relevant and is concerningly Orwellian in that you seem to be saying people need to internalize hiring based on immutable characteristics to ensure those characteristics are represented rather than on competency. I don't want anyone to internalize any of that. I want diversity policy to be a bit of a pain in the ass that forces potentially biased people to try and choose the best they can from a severely underrepresented subset and then watch that choice do well and therefore help them re-calibrate their internal model to not miss out on quality hires outside their experience set. The goal should never be to diligently hire diversity, the goal should always be to help hiring managers trying to do their best improve.
And yes, much like technology, it’s up to people to insure abuse doesn’t happen. Much likely I said before, there’s reason diversity is an issue, clear examples of abuse from minor to horrific, and very unlikely there’s an optimal solution.
That said, I feel exactly confident in saying that currently that inequality, diversity, etc — are still major cultural issues in almost any region in the world; in some countries, inhospitable towards foreign cultures is the norm, not the exception.
Invisible Women[0] is an excellent book on the subject with multiple anecdotes and hard statistical data on how having diverse people making decisions is good for business.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41104077-invisible-women
Video streams don't leave evidence.
Having been harrassed by a group of colleagues during covid, it felt worse in person but it was also easier to circumvent and defend in the office. The distance to changing team was shorter in the office, since I had the opportunity to network while at work. Remote work means you mostly talk to the same people.
Another example of that, not related to harrassment:
First time I spoke to someone who had once spoken to a customer was 7 months into a job, during my first in-office lunch break. It is amazing that companies can be "customer and usability driven" yet almost make a deliberate effort to prevent programmers from talking to end users. Being in office actually got me closer to customers (being able to talk to sales and support without scheduling a meeting).
And double especially if you're in a one-party consent state?
Any lawyers willing to chime in?
Another option comes to mind, namely a preemptive "I record all my videos for reference." I can imagine some businesses having a problem with that for secrecy reasons, though.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-live-captions...
In combination with the person typing to participate in the meeting, this may be more accessible than having to have a sign translator in the meetings with you all the time.
Nowadays in Switzerland there are four different languages: English, French, German and the Swiss-German dialect which is different enough to warrant a separate speech-to-text training, which will be a bit difficult because every valley has its own variant of the dialect.
This is currently a serious barrier. For example at Youtube, if people talk Swiss German Youtube identifies it as Spanish, Dutch, Ukrainian or English, I have seen it all.
If I would need to do remote work, I would look for an international company where the office language is strictly English.
Since you have to communicate via chat and email to keep everyone "together" it stops mattering that you're in the same building as someone. The guys in the US, Belgium and India will almost never be in the room with me and we have to make a team of it despite that.
Personally, I think the commute is wasted time and (a lot of) money. I get to take my daughter to school, to collect her and to spend time with her before she goes to sleep and I am not giving that up without a fight. Try to force me and I'll try to find another job and there are plenty on offer.
The very same reasons why outsourcing was consistently a fail before covid and ended up costing more with inevitable reversals. What kind of worked was near shore, ie cca same time zone, and less savings. But good luck getting that accepted by MBAs.
Working with people overseas is just tricky. China is much too far from my timezone - that' nearly impossible. The Indians I work with put up with very odd hours to be part of our team. It's hard to keep them - they frequently get better offers and leave. The guys in the US are east coast which is not so bad but it makes meetings difficult.
I don't really know how a company like mine could totally avoid being global so to an extent we just have to make something work.
In my last office job I could never get any work done during the day because it was all interruptions and people making use of their ability to "just have a moment." I'd stay till 10pm to do the actual programming. Nowadays with a family that just isn't going to happen so I like a bit of distance.
I think it's useful to meet people once or twice at least - that has turned out to be very good in my experience.
1) ALL my co-workers are in that office when I am. There’s no point in going to a place if the rest of the team isn’t there.
2) Compensate me 100% for all commuting related expenses.
3) A very short commute by bicycle or subway. A short walk would be even better.
4) My own private office. With a door. A fancy door with with my name on it. The kind that detectives used to have in old movies.
5) Even when I’m not working, I am free to use the office as an extension of my personal living space for convenience.
6) Secure bicycle parking/storage.
7) Showers.
8) I am only required to work at most 4 days per week. No more than 32 hours total.
9) Lastly, pay me more than any remote job is offering.
I know you may kid with the tail end of that but this is a key thing for engineers for focus time. Open office floor plans are the opposite of what is needed. Reference is PeopleWare by DeMarco & Lister.
Companies - or at least teams within companies - self-selecting into in-person or remote organizations seems like the best outcome to me. This will probably happen at the whim of management, but maybe also because of the relative preferences of the dominant talent pool they need to attract. I just wonder how much pain and suffering everyone is going to have to endure to figure this out and get there.
I however, 100% agree with the statement that conferences are problem (1) for coming back to the office AND (2) is the fact that commute times were given back to the life of people (and their kids, partners, hobbies, communities, ...) and now people ask to invest that time back to the company.
0 - alternately, “are more productive working”
The key people have plenty of money and tend to live near the city center, their commute is 15 minutes in their car to a dedicated spot in the company garage.
The workers have little money, live in the suburbs and their commute takes an hour. Plus they have to pay for either public transit or parking.
Then again, office space is super-expensive and if they can actually reduce (or eliminate) the amount of office space because of WFH that would be a huge savings. But not every company can do that (yet).
Companies chose to make every office an open office and I wonder how much the work from home phenomenon is a vote against this with the feet.