Regarding the trend I am tired of incessantly churned out articles castigating remote work or puting it in a bad light. There are different experiences out there, different outcomes for different companies and so on. Blanket statements like that against one position or another have a an acrid smell of paid influence.
this is a sword that cuts both ways though. in my experience, employers are much more interested in minimizing the attack surface for subpoenas than jamming up employees for indiscretions that took place over company comms. companies I've worked for have retained emails and chat logs for the minimum duration required by law and aggressively purged anything falling outside that window.
as always, you do need to be careful with written communications, but I highly doubt companies are recording slack huddles of rank-and-file employees. it's expensive and creates unnecessary risk. there's no real reason to do so when the alternative is, at worst, paying 6-12 months salary while the unwanted employee is managed out.
We run a hybrid model at work and it's absolutely wonderful. Go to the office when it feels like to be social and connect with your coworkers, the real work mostly gets done at home. No obligations to show up at certain days or a certain amount of days, just whenever we want.
Different people with different social energy levels and so also different presence intervals, still see each other from time to time. Sprinkle in some nice fun non-obligatory team building activities.. everybody happy and productive.
Pre-pandemic I usually worked in open offices, and always found them horrible.
I found it insane the first job I had that companies preferred me to work in an open plan office, whereas I could do hobby coding without any distractions at home.
From what I've seen there's 2 approaches to hybrid, both under the same name but completely different. 1) as it sounds like yours is, the office is there to use whenever you like, but you don't have to. 2) Work from home X days a week/month
1) Is perfect for me. Though I would admittedly spend 90% of my time working from home, I'd never complain about having the option. 2) is pretty much as bad as WFO for me, in some ways slightly worse (no consistent routine, no consistent work environment, carting my laptop back and forth), in some ways slightly better, but overall pretty much the same.
This is me. I started going back into the office a few days a week recently and love it. My office’s culture is definitely different now than pre-COVID, and better. We’re like better at respecting each others’ focus time while also making good use of lunch and impromptu white boarding.
More of this propaganda? Remote work exposes issues that were previously covered up by being in person.
Society has become increasingly alienating and lonely, going into an office is just a way of papering over that.
Companies haven’t built strong cultures around communicating and mentorship, going into an office is just a way of masking that.
Personally I have worked with and felt camaraderie on distributed teams with people I’ve never met in person. I know it’s possible, but it requires doing things differently than business as usual.
What do you mean when you say mask? To me it sounds like your listing things an in office culture helps with. Yes we could absolutely in theory do different things but do you think the society and companies that have been failing are going to?
Big companies who can’t manage remote work in their corpoate structures are trembling in their pants, remote work companies have the potential to eat their lunch and so are pushing this propaganda while they’re scrabling for a new footing.
sadly the reality is that remote companies that do well is still rare, and large corporations have employees onsite are doing better, and they get even bigger and keep expanding.
I like remote work myself, but if I'm the boss, I might change the idea 180 degrees. It's difficult to stay focused and motivated all the time WFH, it's human nature, sigh. At the end of the day, the company has the upper hand and has the say so they're demanding employees returning to offices more and more now. In two years I predict most of us will "have to" get back to offices.
In my experience people watch YouTube in those corner bench sections, talk gossip for an hour at the cooler and take personal calls in the meeting rooms. Let's not pretend that everyone works all the time and is focused at work. Productive people are mostly productive no matter where, with +/- a couple percent favoring one setting over another.
Society's complete lack of concern for psychological safety or building community is the real problem (at least in the US). Political offices and processes need reform before the world can be fixed. Then you might see people happily going into offices.
Going to an office likely helps this actually, when remote we only interact with people explicitly which is much more of an echo chamber than sitting at lunch and casually joining a conversation about politics you never would have had online
I think in person discussions are much healthier than online ones, because there is a human being sitting across from you rather than a screen name
If your conversations involve people wanting you exterminated… I think in person vs online is even more important. It’s not possible to argue that kind of stance in person unless they’re a crazy person, in which case just avoid those I guess
For example, you found it necessary to personally attack me in another thread, so I think we found where some of the mental health issues actually come from
> If your conversations involve people wanting you exterminated… I think in person vs online is even more important. It’s not possible to argue that kind of stance in person unless they’re a crazy person, in which case just avoid those I guess
See in some settings I can avoid them. But transphobic sexist weirdos are not only incredibly over-represented in IT, but also I kinda don't really get to choose my coworkers.
So yeah, I'll stick with work from home, and I'll have, you know, actual friends otherwise. _Some_ of whom _may_ happen to be coworkers past or present.
> The data points above can lead to a hypothesis that remote workers desire more job security because, without strong in-person connections, it's easy to imagine becoming a layoff statistic.
This is such a clear "are we the baddies" line it hurt XD
Couldn't agree more. I remember when I was working in an office and I'd be invited out to social events with my colleagues outside of work, to the pub or whatever, and I almost always turned it down. I got on really well with them, but just being in the office used up my social energy.
When I started working from home, the situation flipped. Suddenly I was the one often organising these social trips, because my social energy was no longer being used (as much anyway, I was still talking to people regularly, possibly even more so). Working in the office was convenient, I could fill my social needs without even doing anything, but it wasn't real. I wasn't actually socialising with people or seeing friends, I was just sitting near people for 8 hours and that tricked my brain into filling that bar.
Personally, I decided I'd rather than inconvenient truth than a convenient lie. Though real socialisation is a lot more difficult, it's also a lot more fulfilling.
Not saying this is the case for everyone certainly, but that's how it's been for me.
Hybrid work was always a nice balance (having been fully-remote & on-premise). But ‘hybrid’ could mean a lot of things. Meeting up once a week, quarter, or annually for some teams & projects are enough to build that missing trust. Sometimes it’s just grabbing lunch with folks. But also, many of us, myself included, need to do better jobs integrating into the community & meeting our neighbors instead of relying so much on the workplace for socializing. I still find cafés an ideal location just because that reset & stimulation of fellow patrons or even the staff is enough to recharge & shake the funk that is easy to get stuck in if limited to just your own home where it’s too easy not to stop. Coworking spaces, labeled as such or impromptu, can help break it up too.
I was remote before the pandemic, when there would be frequent in person team events and company gatherings. This was great.
Then in the pandemic, isolation. Not great, but temporary.
Now companies are cutting costs so there's no in person gathering, no team get together. Being remote is painful. I'm doing it because I'm used to it and can cope with it for a while, plus I work with people I know from previous jobs. But I can't wait until I can meet in person again and do a more "meet once per quarter" model...
I feel very grateful for having had the opportunity during covid to work remotely for American companies. My salary suddenly skyrocketed 5x, the job was interesting and I had a lot of autonomy. But increasingly I am feeling like I miss the routine of going to work, meeting people and working together. I don't know what to do now, though, since I will have to sacrifice a lot of income if I want to find a hybrid or in-office job.
Try working from co-working space if you have something like that nearby, or working from a coffee shop, etc. Or look for any meetups for other remote workers in your area and if there isn't one, considering starting one, chances are there might be others in the same situation around you.
I tried meetups and, while the events are sometimes entertaining, they are too sparse. There isn't the element of seeing a person constantly and the times I tried reaching someone to get to know them better they usually are too busy yada yada. God, I miss meeting tech people and discussing nerdy things.
> It’s time to admit that remote work doesn’t work. WFH Friday is a four-day work week. Full WFH is a two-day workweek. When people are not in the office, every interaction has to be planned in advance. And that means a lot of information-sharing doesn’t happen. Remote is a great lifestyle, not a way to build a great company
If you're starting an article with a strong, absolute, data-devoid, and highly opinion-based quote from an executive (not an engineer or direct manager), then I'm not going to take much stock in your writing.
Look, I'm not saying remote is better or worse. But I will say that as an engineer, a hybrid model works excellent for my personal productivity. If anything, I spend more hours focused when I'm at home or at my local coffee shop. I am fully aware that I am missing social interaction, serendipitous productive conversation, yada yada, when I'm not in the office. I am aware that my company might be more productive if we were all in-person. But statements like this?
> Full WFH is a two-day workweek.
Yeah, fuck off. Why are we trusting executives' opinions on day-to-day lives of their line workers anyway? Their work is different: it's largely based on connections and debates and presentations and deal-making. My work is centered around focused writing and refinement of code and prose. Obviously our ideal work environments might differ.
Also, tangentially, every image in this article seems to be a stock photo of someone stressed out in an office :)
> "Yeah, fuck off. Why are we trusting executives' opinions on day-to-day lives of their line workers anyway?"
'cause executives are the ones whose neck is on the line for success of their business division so they are extremely motivated to keep a close eye on profitability and progress on business goals, particularly when the economy looks wobbly. [mic drop]
(Yes, there are examples of executives who are incompetent and/or just plain dumb, but they are the minority.)
And, of course, before I get attacked as pro-RTO, I myself WFH and only go to the office when circumstances require it.
> 'cause executives are the ones whose neck is on the line for success of their business division so they are extremely motivated to keep a close eye on profitability and progress on business goals, particularly when the economy looks wobbly.
...so? What is the conclusion? You force people to do what they hate and hope for better results? It really makes no sense.
You can definitely hate stuff and be more productive when it occurs.
Imagine how high productivity would be if managers were allowed to literally crack the whip at engineers who slow down after working for 10 hours a day.
We don’t allow that because it’s inhumane. I think a similar principle applies to WFH. Even if it’s less productive it’s still better for society.
> Imagine how high productivity would be if managers were allowed to literally crack the whip at engineers who slow down after working for 10 hours a day.
I'll tell you what would happen. The engineers would quit on the spot and you'd end up with a sea of empty desks.
Why are some managers so dense? Is this an ego thing?
OK, so if you reduce this hyperbole to a normal statement, the parent says you can make people work harder by using negative reinforcement such as harsh words, for example.
Well, it might work for some people, but I guess only short term and they will leave at the first opportunity.
Sure, but just like return to office rhetoric, executives will conspire to make sure there is no opportunity to opt out because all workplaces use the same abusive system.
It’s not really just a thought experiment.
Terrible things like slavery and indentured servitude aren’t wide spread because they are illegal… not because they wouldn’t be wildly popular with the class of people who could actually buy slaves and hire overseers to whip them.
In the past scheme, it may have been indentured servants getting the whip, but today it may be undocumented immigrants and H1B1 workers tethered to their current job.
Sure, but fortunately we have competition and as long as there are companies willing to hire remote workers, they will have a strong advantage over those who don't, and employees will have a choice.
I think its a good idea to turn this example around to try and understand the executive perspective in this.
If your financial livelihood and the financial livelihoods of many other people are dependent upon you delivering a highly complex block of code—would you want to rely on a brand new production method or tool to deliver it that you don’t trust? A method that departs from successful methods of historical code production that have worked well for you for decades. A method that your peers, whose opinion you trust, advise against? A method that successful industry leaders are publicly moving away from rapidly?
Seems like there isn’t a WFH preaching engineer that is going to willfully move away from their set of tools and comfortable knowledge base to deliver something critical, I am not sure why we should expect something different from these leaders either.
I understand these CEOs might think this way (although I'm not sure if all do, and for sure most have a mix of different reasons), but there is a fault in this reasoning in the sense that working remotely is not in any way novel. I had been working in an international team delivering decent quality code for years that brought my company tons of money long before the pandemic. So you might say these CEOs are afraid of what is new for them, not in general.
Moreover, this line of reasoning completely ignores the influence of employee satisfaction on productivity. They had something they valued a lot, now you take it away. I witnessed it several times and every time CEOs did that, productivity plummeted significantly and people were starting to take photos for LinkedIn.
WFH at scale only really started happening in 2020 because of the pandemic. I realize that there were a growing number of orgs experimenting prior and some were successful with it. I worked (partially) remotely from 2008-2011, then full remote again since March 2020 and have been since.
So we have WFH at scale for 3 years balanced against in-office work that has decades and decades of successful history behind. Also consider that the global catalyst that drove WFH at scale is now no longer a factor.
So when presented with a choice of what’s comfortable vs uncomfortable, people will opt for the comfortable unless forced to the uncomfortable. What’s happening now is simply a restoration to a comfortable business state…from the executives POV because there is no longer a pandemic forcing them to be operating in an uncomfortable business state.
This is a very naive take. I'm guessing you haven't spent much time in large organizations with multiple levels of management where politics, synthetic KPIs and incentives are completely misaligned with What's the best for the organisation.
Not necessarily. I have spent nearly four decades with a good portion of that working for very large orgs. Those politics, KPIs, and incentives are not always misaligned with what is best for the organization, but may be misaligned with what some people lower in the org think is what’s best for the organization.
You know what you think you know, but you don’t know what you don’t know.
"The research, which is not yet peer-reviewed, was based on 2400 employee responses across five surveys between 2021 and 2022." Why is this even allowed to be posted?
'denier' implies that they're wrong whereas it's an objective fact: I have kids and a million responsibilities outside work and every 15 minutes saved by not commuting is 15 minutes that I don't have to do chores on the weekend or 15 minutes more with my kids or wife. Will not go back to office until they start pulling my teeth out.
4) Those who want access to a non local talent pool
5) Those who are local but still don't want to add a commute to their work day
6) Those who don't want to pay for an office. (Including workers who would rather see it in their paychecks)
We still haven't solved out the way to balance offices and remote workers, but I am grateful that we're at least being forced to ask the question. We are recycling formulas from factory work that need to be reconsidered.
Agreed, this was a dumb comment, I think what I was ultimately trying to say is there are also people who like working and want to enjoy the thing most of us spend most of our waking time doing, everyone’s situation is different and there’s no one size fits all anything
I think a lot of people have depended on work for a large part of their social lives, and a lot of others feel conscripted into that. It's going to be a rough transition.
Ultimately I think it's even broader, as we reconsider the 40 hour work week and even the need for universal work at all. And that will be even tougher.
How conducive an org's culture & policies are to remote work has a direct impact on remote workers. (Companies who were quickly forced into remote work at the start of the pandemic all fired a shotgun from 100 yards and hit the target everywhere. Those who hit the middle realized that remote work had its upsides. Those who missed reinforced their own bias against remote work and dug in their heels.)
Each team's implementation of these policies can vary which gives a member on one team a great experience and a another team a miserable one.
Remote workers all have different social needs. If you're lucky, your team fits your's. If you're not, your potential office BFF may be on a different remote team and you'll never meet them.
I spent 2016-2022 at the same org who was 50% remote and it was great. Early 2022 I moved to a new org and my team never spoke outside morning stand-ups and I hated it. I've now chosen a hybrid position where it's 95% up to me when I'm in office and it's been the perfect fit.
YMMV, not all orgs will do remote well. Not all workers will do remote well. Let's stop demonizing the other side and realize there is no single answer.
There are so many bloody articles going both ways on the WFH. Feels fairly simple, some people enjoy it and some people hate it. Some are more productive working from home, some are less productive. This desire to try and paint everything as either black or white, good or bad, it's so frustrating.
Trying to apply any statistical analysis to this feels like such a waste of time. There are so many outside factors to consider. Even if you do some shit polls and find that "WFH is 10% worse on average" or "WFH is 17.8% better on average", using that information to make any decisions for yourself or your company would be insane.
The way this article tries to legitimise itself with it's shoddy use of statistics is just painful, I couldn't finish it.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadRegarding the trend I am tired of incessantly churned out articles castigating remote work or puting it in a bad light. There are different experiences out there, different outcomes for different companies and so on. Blanket statements like that against one position or another have a an acrid smell of paid influence.
as always, you do need to be careful with written communications, but I highly doubt companies are recording slack huddles of rank-and-file employees. it's expensive and creates unnecessary risk. there's no real reason to do so when the alternative is, at worst, paying 6-12 months salary while the unwanted employee is managed out.
Different people with different social energy levels and so also different presence intervals, still see each other from time to time. Sprinkle in some nice fun non-obligatory team building activities.. everybody happy and productive.
Pre-pandemic I usually worked in open offices, and always found them horrible.
I found it insane the first job I had that companies preferred me to work in an open plan office, whereas I could do hobby coding without any distractions at home.
1) Is perfect for me. Though I would admittedly spend 90% of my time working from home, I'd never complain about having the option. 2) is pretty much as bad as WFO for me, in some ways slightly worse (no consistent routine, no consistent work environment, carting my laptop back and forth), in some ways slightly better, but overall pretty much the same.
I got to the office to do meetings with people that are at home.
I ditched the hybrid and now 2 days of week I go to an Coworking/incubator space where I have the social and "out of house" needs.
Society has become increasingly alienating and lonely, going into an office is just a way of papering over that.
Companies haven’t built strong cultures around communicating and mentorship, going into an office is just a way of masking that.
Personally I have worked with and felt camaraderie on distributed teams with people I’ve never met in person. I know it’s possible, but it requires doing things differently than business as usual.
I like remote work myself, but if I'm the boss, I might change the idea 180 degrees. It's difficult to stay focused and motivated all the time WFH, it's human nature, sigh. At the end of the day, the company has the upper hand and has the say so they're demanding employees returning to offices more and more now. In two years I predict most of us will "have to" get back to offices.
Yes, what will surely improve my mental health is a workplace conversation about how I should be exterminated. Fantastic idea.
If your conversations involve people wanting you exterminated… I think in person vs online is even more important. It’s not possible to argue that kind of stance in person unless they’re a crazy person, in which case just avoid those I guess
See in some settings I can avoid them. But transphobic sexist weirdos are not only incredibly over-represented in IT, but also I kinda don't really get to choose my coworkers.
So yeah, I'll stick with work from home, and I'll have, you know, actual friends otherwise. _Some_ of whom _may_ happen to be coworkers past or present.
This is such a clear "are we the baddies" line it hurt XD
When I started working from home, the situation flipped. Suddenly I was the one often organising these social trips, because my social energy was no longer being used (as much anyway, I was still talking to people regularly, possibly even more so). Working in the office was convenient, I could fill my social needs without even doing anything, but it wasn't real. I wasn't actually socialising with people or seeing friends, I was just sitting near people for 8 hours and that tricked my brain into filling that bar.
Personally, I decided I'd rather than inconvenient truth than a convenient lie. Though real socialisation is a lot more difficult, it's also a lot more fulfilling.
Not saying this is the case for everyone certainly, but that's how it's been for me.
Then in the pandemic, isolation. Not great, but temporary.
Now companies are cutting costs so there's no in person gathering, no team get together. Being remote is painful. I'm doing it because I'm used to it and can cope with it for a while, plus I work with people I know from previous jobs. But I can't wait until I can meet in person again and do a more "meet once per quarter" model...
But you'll always have some hippie developers on hackernews who believe remote is the future religiously.
If you're starting an article with a strong, absolute, data-devoid, and highly opinion-based quote from an executive (not an engineer or direct manager), then I'm not going to take much stock in your writing.
Look, I'm not saying remote is better or worse. But I will say that as an engineer, a hybrid model works excellent for my personal productivity. If anything, I spend more hours focused when I'm at home or at my local coffee shop. I am fully aware that I am missing social interaction, serendipitous productive conversation, yada yada, when I'm not in the office. I am aware that my company might be more productive if we were all in-person. But statements like this?
> Full WFH is a two-day workweek.
Yeah, fuck off. Why are we trusting executives' opinions on day-to-day lives of their line workers anyway? Their work is different: it's largely based on connections and debates and presentations and deal-making. My work is centered around focused writing and refinement of code and prose. Obviously our ideal work environments might differ.
Also, tangentially, every image in this article seems to be a stock photo of someone stressed out in an office :)
'cause executives are the ones whose neck is on the line for success of their business division so they are extremely motivated to keep a close eye on profitability and progress on business goals, particularly when the economy looks wobbly. [mic drop]
(Yes, there are examples of executives who are incompetent and/or just plain dumb, but they are the minority.)
And, of course, before I get attacked as pro-RTO, I myself WFH and only go to the office when circumstances require it.
...so? What is the conclusion? You force people to do what they hate and hope for better results? It really makes no sense.
Imagine how high productivity would be if managers were allowed to literally crack the whip at engineers who slow down after working for 10 hours a day.
We don’t allow that because it’s inhumane. I think a similar principle applies to WFH. Even if it’s less productive it’s still better for society.
> Imagine how high productivity would be if managers were allowed to literally crack the whip at engineers who slow down after working for 10 hours a day.
I'll tell you what would happen. The engineers would quit on the spot and you'd end up with a sea of empty desks.
Why are some managers so dense? Is this an ego thing?
Well, it might work for some people, but I guess only short term and they will leave at the first opportunity.
It’s not really just a thought experiment.
Terrible things like slavery and indentured servitude aren’t wide spread because they are illegal… not because they wouldn’t be wildly popular with the class of people who could actually buy slaves and hire overseers to whip them.
In the past scheme, it may have been indentured servants getting the whip, but today it may be undocumented immigrants and H1B1 workers tethered to their current job.
If your financial livelihood and the financial livelihoods of many other people are dependent upon you delivering a highly complex block of code—would you want to rely on a brand new production method or tool to deliver it that you don’t trust? A method that departs from successful methods of historical code production that have worked well for you for decades. A method that your peers, whose opinion you trust, advise against? A method that successful industry leaders are publicly moving away from rapidly?
Seems like there isn’t a WFH preaching engineer that is going to willfully move away from their set of tools and comfortable knowledge base to deliver something critical, I am not sure why we should expect something different from these leaders either.
Moreover, this line of reasoning completely ignores the influence of employee satisfaction on productivity. They had something they valued a lot, now you take it away. I witnessed it several times and every time CEOs did that, productivity plummeted significantly and people were starting to take photos for LinkedIn.
So we have WFH at scale for 3 years balanced against in-office work that has decades and decades of successful history behind. Also consider that the global catalyst that drove WFH at scale is now no longer a factor.
So when presented with a choice of what’s comfortable vs uncomfortable, people will opt for the comfortable unless forced to the uncomfortable. What’s happening now is simply a restoration to a comfortable business state…from the executives POV because there is no longer a pandemic forcing them to be operating in an uncomfortable business state.
Articles like this are just the effect of a parasite class buying off 2nd rate "news" outlets to postpone their demise.
But the status-quo is gone, and it's a positive delight to be able to tell these jumped up flunkies that they are redundant.
You know what you think you know, but you don’t know what you don’t know.
1) families or other people who have a large amount of responsibility outside of work, absolutely love hybrid
2) recluse engineers who love being alone and socialize on the internet, even 1 day in an office a week is unacceptable
3) Those who live elsewhere
4) Those who want access to a non local talent pool
5) Those who are local but still don't want to add a commute to their work day
6) Those who don't want to pay for an office. (Including workers who would rather see it in their paychecks)
We still haven't solved out the way to balance offices and remote workers, but I am grateful that we're at least being forced to ask the question. We are recycling formulas from factory work that need to be reconsidered.
Ultimately I think it's even broader, as we reconsider the 40 hour work week and even the need for universal work at all. And that will be even tougher.
Actually I just have friends outside of work. The reason you never see that is that nobody invites you to things if they aren't paid for it.
A few of my takes on it:
How conducive an org's culture & policies are to remote work has a direct impact on remote workers. (Companies who were quickly forced into remote work at the start of the pandemic all fired a shotgun from 100 yards and hit the target everywhere. Those who hit the middle realized that remote work had its upsides. Those who missed reinforced their own bias against remote work and dug in their heels.)
Each team's implementation of these policies can vary which gives a member on one team a great experience and a another team a miserable one.
Remote workers all have different social needs. If you're lucky, your team fits your's. If you're not, your potential office BFF may be on a different remote team and you'll never meet them.
I spent 2016-2022 at the same org who was 50% remote and it was great. Early 2022 I moved to a new org and my team never spoke outside morning stand-ups and I hated it. I've now chosen a hybrid position where it's 95% up to me when I'm in office and it's been the perfect fit.
YMMV, not all orgs will do remote well. Not all workers will do remote well. Let's stop demonizing the other side and realize there is no single answer.
Trying to apply any statistical analysis to this feels like such a waste of time. There are so many outside factors to consider. Even if you do some shit polls and find that "WFH is 10% worse on average" or "WFH is 17.8% better on average", using that information to make any decisions for yourself or your company would be insane.
The way this article tries to legitimise itself with it's shoddy use of statistics is just painful, I couldn't finish it.