What cost are founders willing to pay for this vision of their employee-employer relations?
Fundamentally that's what it comes down to. Maybe the 10% sackings in the FAANG was the reset to force costs of labour down, and it worked, or maybe knowledge worker unions will happen at scale and founders will have to accept what to them looks like a tractable cost containment is in fact unavoidable: if you need specific skills then expect to pay net present value for them.
I increasingly like to see founders as parasites, not creative geniuses. Theranos wasn't unusual, what was unusual was believing medical tech was the thing to play in.
I wish we had more people like the ones we had in Xerox Park, Bell labs, and IBM's labs.
The obvious cost would be to provide actual offices (with at least doors that close, and preferably windows that open) for those employees willing to return to "the office".
> What cost are founders willing to pay for this vision of their employee-employer relations?
Founders have the most to gain (or lose) from the success (or failure) of their startups. It seems obvious to me that that would be the one group of people who totally focuses on the success of the overall company. If they deem that the company would be more successful with WFH, they would continue WFH.
Are people still going to try to blame office lease agreements for management wanting workers back in the office?
When are remote workers going to start blaming themselves? Clearly, companies big and small are recalling their workers back to their office. Clearly, they have data showing that their productivity metrics have declined. Tech management are usually very data-driven compared to other industries. So if they're recalling workers, then they must see something.
The simplest explanation is that remote/hybrid culture is less productive on some metric - whether it's total company output or less creativity or whatever it is. So while an individual remote worker might perceive himself or herself as being more productive, they often do not think at the level of the total company output.
And no, they aren't going to come out and explicitly say that their WFH workers are lazier and less productive. That's just bad PR. But you can infer what management is seeing from their actions.
If companies have such metrics, they'd use them as part of the rationale for RTO. Nobody states anything other than "culture" or "casual synergy" or some other hand wavy stuff.
They'd never come out and say "We are recalling our workers because we have data showing they're less productive while working from home.".
Saying something like that would cause a lot of bad PR. Piss off your workers even more. The media, pro-WFH people, HN will pan the company for saying something like that. There's no winning for the company to take this risk. It's best to say something generic like "culture".
Thanks for saying this. Another popular canard is tax breaks for RTO. However, I don't see many SV cities offering tax breaks to companies for having their employees in office. In fact, big employers in these cities provide meals and other perks on campus such that employees don't really boost any city tax revenue. So I wonder which cities offer these breaks?
yes, I guess part of the reason why they did what they did is having people around you that recognize what you did, the fact that you are the genius/boss/brave...
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 47.3 ms ] threadFundamentally that's what it comes down to. Maybe the 10% sackings in the FAANG was the reset to force costs of labour down, and it worked, or maybe knowledge worker unions will happen at scale and founders will have to accept what to them looks like a tractable cost containment is in fact unavoidable: if you need specific skills then expect to pay net present value for them.
I increasingly like to see founders as parasites, not creative geniuses. Theranos wasn't unusual, what was unusual was believing medical tech was the thing to play in.
I wish we had more people like the ones we had in Xerox Park, Bell labs, and IBM's labs.
Get rich quick IPO nonsense is ruining tech.
The obvious cost would be to provide actual offices (with at least doors that close, and preferably windows that open) for those employees willing to return to "the office".
Haven't really seen anyone paying that cost for more than a decade now, particularly in SV.
Founders have the most to gain (or lose) from the success (or failure) of their startups. It seems obvious to me that that would be the one group of people who totally focuses on the success of the overall company. If they deem that the company would be more successful with WFH, they would continue WFH.
When are remote workers going to start blaming themselves? Clearly, companies big and small are recalling their workers back to their office. Clearly, they have data showing that their productivity metrics have declined. Tech management are usually very data-driven compared to other industries. So if they're recalling workers, then they must see something.
The simplest explanation is that remote/hybrid culture is less productive on some metric - whether it's total company output or less creativity or whatever it is. So while an individual remote worker might perceive himself or herself as being more productive, they often do not think at the level of the total company output.
And no, they aren't going to come out and explicitly say that their WFH workers are lazier and less productive. That's just bad PR. But you can infer what management is seeing from their actions.
I conclude they don't have such metrics.
Saying something like that would cause a lot of bad PR. Piss off your workers even more. The media, pro-WFH people, HN will pan the company for saying something like that. There's no winning for the company to take this risk. It's best to say something generic like "culture".
and all of this is lost if workers are at home
interesting how many of those names have commercial property investments. direct or indirect.
could it be related?