People who have to be in the office should also object to RTO. Needless commuting clogs the roads and public transport. Fewer commuters mean less chance of being stuck in traffic and a better chance of getting a seat.
If the tone of the article wasn’t so flippant I’d maybe have read all the way through it. I’m not going to read an article that sounds like it’s written by a petulant child.
And the worse of all, is that in most cases the work is exactly the same, and there is no collaboration on the office, because the team is geographically distributed anyway, so the only thing changing are the location of the video calls, and with whom to chat during coffee breaks.
We have some sort of hybrid policy. Every single time I have showed up at the office, I either end up socialising far too much and get nothing done (I find it extremely hard to work next to people without talking to them).
Or nobody is there and I end up having driven (40 minutes each way) to the office to have Teams meetings with a wonderful view of the car park, under fluorescent lights, using a cheap low-resolution office monitor. When I could have been having those Teams meetings with a view of my garden and a much nicer monitor I have invested in
I'm genuinely interested in why RTO is trending. I searched Harvard Business Review, Gartner, and other sources just last week trying to find the rationale, but I wasn't successful. In fact, I found those sources to be a little cautionary. E.g., they say "if you do switch to in-office or hybrid, make sure you actually have metrics to evaluate the effects" and "ensure it makes sense for the actual work to be done by each role".
I also found results suggesting flexible working policies had positive properties like higher employee satisfaction, retention , and a wider applicant pool.
I'm not interested in hearing why the choir here at HN thinks companies are making these decisions, I want to see evidence of their rationale so I can put myself in management's shoes.
> employees who now have to spend money on [...] childcare
Excuse me, what? Unless he's referring to something like before and after school care for an older child, he's saying people were foregoing daycare for their young children? As a parent of two children younger than kindergarten age, I don't understand how productive remote work was being done without childcare.
I feel that the reason RTO is still such a wonderful topic to write about or debate online, is that the spectrum of human "experience" is so wide, that there will always be a significant number of people on either side of the fence.
Personally, I can't count the amount of times I've switched sides, and I don't think I'm the only one.
IMO, mandated RTO is (objectively) an effort by large organizations to make their "systems" more predictable in aggregate. The manner of predictability will be largely depend on the size of the organization (e.g. A startup vs. Microsoft) and their needs (productivity/reliability/consistency/etc), and we see this manifest in any number of the RTO announcements we've seen online.
I think there are three alternative hypotheses the article misses from its list:
* Ego: senior people need to be seen and respected in person; being reduced to equally-sized thumbnail videos on Teams doesn't feed this need.
* Real estate: some companies have financial commitments (e.g. long-term leases, owned buildings) to large office buildings which need to be justified; selling or ending the lease early might reflect badly on leadership.
* Extroverts: some people just prefer to be in an office, surrounded by and interacting with lots of people, rather than sitting at home in relative isolation. (I'm definitely not one of them, but I have good friends who are like this.)
What RTO and WTAF means? Who knows. I clicked on link to find out but looks like website blogs my IP range. I will never know this important information..
It's indeed one of the most stupid decisions a management could make.
People will be more tired once they arrive in the office. From a companies perspective skilled people will just leave to another company. And you can't hire the best people from everywhere if you need to have an office present. And obviously there are a lot more drawbacks.
From a society perspective it contributes to traffic jams, it contributes to overfilled public transport, and it puts needless stress on infrastructure. In general, it's just not efficient at all.
Sadly many big corporations are lead by narcissists who care more about their ego, who need to feel like they can control other people, rather than their well being or having a positive impact. Some may use it to get rid of people, but that, truly has to be the most stupid way to get rid of your best employees.
It bears repeating that if you're a tech worker in the US, your greatest asset is your physical location.
You might think you like remote jobs, but you will have competition from South America, Western and Eastern Europe, etc. as well as people in the US living in flyover states in the middle of nowhere with cheap rent.
If the focus also shifts more to raw input-output task accomplishmentbas opposed to in person social interaction, your cultural capital will also lose value.
There is a vast gulf between the salaries in the US and even Western Europe in tech. Americans seem unaware, but if you insist on remote work, you'll lose that advantage quick. If you think that everyone overseas is simply less intelligent, you'll have a rough awakening.
> You will cause untold mental, physical and financial upheaval for many employees who now have to spend money on commuting, childcare, pet care, to name but a few.
RTO is way to force people work for two more hours per day for the same pay (1 hour typical commute one way). Hence it is done to suppress wages and make people leave voluntarily. It's not that hard to deduce.
Everyone has their own explanations for why businesses do these things, and I see merit in many of them. Here's my contribution to the list.
All these complaints about poorly-thought-out RTO policies come from big corporations. If you're a senior leader in a organisation with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees, it's very difficult to keep in touch with the people who actually do the work in making or providing the product or service that the business brings to the market. As a consequence, leaders come to believe that the routine of their work day - ingesting reports, engaging in discussions, and communicating decisions - is representative of what's going on in the organisation. Ultimately, I think it's a limitation of human psychology: the organisation is larger than Dunbar's number, and so starts to become opaque to its members.
My solution is to only work for businesses that are small enough for everyone to know everyone else.
> “We don’t think people do their best work from home”: Prove it.
It isn't the corporations job to prove it, they're paying the salary because of their own internal calculations about what is valuable to them. It really in't that much of a stretch to say companies are serious about their motivations here - there are much easier ways to do layoffs than moving everyone into an office.
"Your company didn't collapse during COVID" isn't much of an argument. It is like saying someone didn't die of COVID so they can handle being sick 24x7 for the rest of their life. Just because something is survivable or even tolerable doesn't mean it is desirable.
These are weak arguments in the post. It is not the commute which is the problem. In my experience (tech specifically) office is unnecessary because I do less work, and it is more depressing because you still talk with the same people over the chat and calls. There are issues with the shortage of phone booths, and listening to every conversation does not help concentrate. Then there is poor old hardware, not many will buy Herman Miller for their subordinates. Another thing not mentioned is the total show of appearances over outcomes. Not to mention geographically distributed teams.
At the end of the day it is the product and its perception by the paying customer that matters.
"but it’s a sure-fire way to rid yourself of those pesky skilled and experienced employees. "
That's so true. In my niche, everybody WFH, only the most desperate folks take stationary/hybrid offers - and only for the time it takes them to find the proper job. (Yeah I know everybody's different but I just share my anecdata - we do meet in person sometimes but it is not forced and we genuinely enjoy it.)
We have a similar push for RTO here in Germany as well where the usual U.S. centric reasons don't apply (tax break law has not changed; we're still semi-ZIRP at 2%, no H1B visas, outsourcing is not a major trend either as many companies want German speaking employees).
I think the reason is simple: Lock-in for employees. Moving for your employer demonstrates dependence and highlights your inferior bargaining position. If you have to move again to switch jobs it will be quite painful so you'll likely accept a lower salary instead.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 45.5 ms ] threadOr nobody is there and I end up having driven (40 minutes each way) to the office to have Teams meetings with a wonderful view of the car park, under fluorescent lights, using a cheap low-resolution office monitor. When I could have been having those Teams meetings with a view of my garden and a much nicer monitor I have invested in
I also found results suggesting flexible working policies had positive properties like higher employee satisfaction, retention , and a wider applicant pool.
I'm not interested in hearing why the choir here at HN thinks companies are making these decisions, I want to see evidence of their rationale so I can put myself in management's shoes.
Excuse me, what? Unless he's referring to something like before and after school care for an older child, he's saying people were foregoing daycare for their young children? As a parent of two children younger than kindergarten age, I don't understand how productive remote work was being done without childcare.
Personally, I can't count the amount of times I've switched sides, and I don't think I'm the only one.
IMO, mandated RTO is (objectively) an effort by large organizations to make their "systems" more predictable in aggregate. The manner of predictability will be largely depend on the size of the organization (e.g. A startup vs. Microsoft) and their needs (productivity/reliability/consistency/etc), and we see this manifest in any number of the RTO announcements we've seen online.
* Ego: senior people need to be seen and respected in person; being reduced to equally-sized thumbnail videos on Teams doesn't feed this need.
* Real estate: some companies have financial commitments (e.g. long-term leases, owned buildings) to large office buildings which need to be justified; selling or ending the lease early might reflect badly on leadership.
* Extroverts: some people just prefer to be in an office, surrounded by and interacting with lots of people, rather than sitting at home in relative isolation. (I'm definitely not one of them, but I have good friends who are like this.)
Remote is good for: People who work alone & People that don't like commuting
Remote is bad for: People who work together with other people & People who like socializing IRL (including managers)
Too many developers think they are working alone, while in fact they are part of a team and they would be better off working closer to that team.
People will be more tired once they arrive in the office. From a companies perspective skilled people will just leave to another company. And you can't hire the best people from everywhere if you need to have an office present. And obviously there are a lot more drawbacks.
From a society perspective it contributes to traffic jams, it contributes to overfilled public transport, and it puts needless stress on infrastructure. In general, it's just not efficient at all.
Sadly many big corporations are lead by narcissists who care more about their ego, who need to feel like they can control other people, rather than their well being or having a positive impact. Some may use it to get rid of people, but that, truly has to be the most stupid way to get rid of your best employees.
You might think you like remote jobs, but you will have competition from South America, Western and Eastern Europe, etc. as well as people in the US living in flyover states in the middle of nowhere with cheap rent.
If the focus also shifts more to raw input-output task accomplishmentbas opposed to in person social interaction, your cultural capital will also lose value.
There is a vast gulf between the salaries in the US and even Western Europe in tech. Americans seem unaware, but if you insist on remote work, you'll lose that advantage quick. If you think that everyone overseas is simply less intelligent, you'll have a rough awakening.
as if they care.
don't you feel like everything is getting worse in some ways?
the delusion is to think you're special because you work for a big evil company.
All these complaints about poorly-thought-out RTO policies come from big corporations. If you're a senior leader in a organisation with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees, it's very difficult to keep in touch with the people who actually do the work in making or providing the product or service that the business brings to the market. As a consequence, leaders come to believe that the routine of their work day - ingesting reports, engaging in discussions, and communicating decisions - is representative of what's going on in the organisation. Ultimately, I think it's a limitation of human psychology: the organisation is larger than Dunbar's number, and so starts to become opaque to its members.
My solution is to only work for businesses that are small enough for everyone to know everyone else.
It isn't the corporations job to prove it, they're paying the salary because of their own internal calculations about what is valuable to them. It really in't that much of a stretch to say companies are serious about their motivations here - there are much easier ways to do layoffs than moving everyone into an office.
"Your company didn't collapse during COVID" isn't much of an argument. It is like saying someone didn't die of COVID so they can handle being sick 24x7 for the rest of their life. Just because something is survivable or even tolerable doesn't mean it is desirable.
At the end of the day it is the product and its perception by the paying customer that matters.
That's so true. In my niche, everybody WFH, only the most desperate folks take stationary/hybrid offers - and only for the time it takes them to find the proper job. (Yeah I know everybody's different but I just share my anecdata - we do meet in person sometimes but it is not forced and we genuinely enjoy it.)
I think the reason is simple: Lock-in for employees. Moving for your employer demonstrates dependence and highlights your inferior bargaining position. If you have to move again to switch jobs it will be quite painful so you'll likely accept a lower salary instead.