Comment by netsharc 3 days ago
Sheesh, why should it be unpopular. It's called having a preference/choice. Companies telling everyone to be in the office 5 days a week 9-5 (or whatever) is removing that choice. Some like you may not mind, but for others it might be hell...
I parsed that as:
"If anyone has an office in a building, then everyone must have an office in that building and must be forced to work there."
And I just don't follow that. Why must it be this way? So that the office is full?
If so, then: If having the office full every day is an important metric and WfH interferes with that metric, then the problem is not that the people make choices.
Instead, it is that the office is larger than it should be.
> Instead, it is that the office is larger than it should be.
Yep, but rather than admit that having too big an office is a mistake, they double down on it and try to force employees back into the offices. For a certain type of personality, pushing the negative ramifications down to subordinates is easier than admitting that they need to solve the actual problem.
The problem is literal vested interests in commercial real estate. Not just in the sense that the company itself owns their offices, but many of the local businesses around those offices are popular investments for upper management. (Amazon in particular isn’t a free-lunch workplace, so at least when I was there, there were tons of lunch spots scattered amidst the Amazon campus.) If people don’t RTO, a lot of money stands to be lost, especially since Amazon was investing heavily in both their expanded Seattle campus in the Denny Triangle and HQ2 when COVID hit.
I would agree, but I have to ask: where's the cutoff?
If you let people "choose" and 99% choose to always work from home, do you think that's gonna fly? I don't. I think the in-officers would be very upset about that because that's not enough people to make their in-office experience how they like it.
No matter how you slice it, such a position is one born of control. You have to force some people's hand in where they work.
You don't necessarily. Optional WFH or coworking arrangements let you come into the office if you prefer to, but let people who would rather WFH do so if they prefer to. They were pretty common even during the pandemic, eg. in my time in the startup scene probably 70-80% of founders worked out of a coworking office instead of their home.
Optional WFH is the one thing called "WFH" on the vast majority of cases. The few places that mandate you not to go to the office all make sure to make that position clear.
I’m currently job searching and I tend to just see (remote) or (hybrid). It usually requires me digging into the description to see if a company has an office I can go to.
Some that are hybrid optional list themselves as (remote), but do so fully remote companies.
Because it's really hard for a company to do both. Even if it's a remote first and the office is just a place to do zoom calls. Human nature will divide it into two camps with social bonds being stronger within the remote/on office groups than across.
Speaking as someone who would have to be dragged back to an office, it's obvious that the in office group would win out. Bonds are weaker in the remote group and your type A ladder climbers will be overrepresented in the in office group.
So hybrid office is probably going to lead to all in office. Especially in these difficult economic times as workforces stagnate or shrink in these companies.
Teams that are relatively co-located geographically can coordinate to come into a location regularly on the same days. That really didn't happen where I worked and, as far as I know, the company continues to shed real estate. I'm not sure the execs especially liked the shift but, starting from the base of a fairly remote-friendly company, COVID just largely shredded whatever in-office culture there was for better or worse.
So, yeah, I think there was some pre-COVID middle ground but you probably have a fairly large percent of people mostly coming into an office and a fairly small percent doing so--which of course tends to reinforce both behaviors. (And it grew a lot in a distributed manner as well which probably made getting everyone together physically all the time less relevant.)
Simultaneously, when I was there, the other thing that was going on was that the company was basically not paying for off-sites any longer. So, latterly, I had immediate team Zooms but was pretty much disconnected more broadly.
There was this intersection of COVID and don't spend money that isn't NECESSARY. And the result was basically everything on Zoom. I actually spent a lot of my own money to attend some conferences to maintain some contact with people.
Some coordinated office presence + some WFH is a good mix that reduces commute times, increases WFH productivity (because in-office interactions lead to pressure to deliver), and maintains face-to-face access.
totally depends on the job, team, and culture as well I think.
I thought I'd enjoy going back to the office, until 5 days a week was enforced and I was frequently getting interrupted.
As another commenter said, nurturing a social life is more difficult when working from home, you have to be deliberate about it. I felt the office just made it more convenient to hang out, but it never really happened because I was too burned out by the work.
I find nurturing a social life much easier when I'm WFH because I don't end each day dead on my feet from being overstimulated all day, being in uncomfortable clothes, etc. It also means I don't have to choose between chores and going out after work/on weekends. (A lot of my job is being available for issues and/or requires waiting on SMEs so I have downtime). And it means my social battery isn't drained by the 40 conversations about coworkers' kids that I don't care about (I participate to create a good social environment, but it's just not an enjoyable conversation topic for me) so I can spend my social energy on people and topics that actually fill my cup.
I used to get drained by uncomfortable clothes without noticing it until I got on the Vuori train. There are plenty of other brands now but the Meta pants and Strato Tech Tee are my go-to's. Sizing up helps too.
Not sponsored, I encourage you and anyone else who suffers from clothing-drain to try different brands too. Stretchy, breathable, and clean/crisp looking work best for me.
Weeeelll, one of the issues is that I'm female and am sensitive to pressure. Wearing a bra all day everyday SUCKS, especially since I'm a very strange size and shape so finding ones that fit costs hundreds of dollars and hours of my time. But God forbid men be aware that we have breasts and that sometimes they dangle or have nipples.
Sizing up also doesn't work for women - we look slovenly then unless we go tailor everything which is more time and $.
I prefer being able to work in a sports bra and sweatpants.
No, that idea has completely eluded me for the two decades I've spent in the workforce.
My bra size isn't even manufactured/sold in my country, and at one point in my life I was a size that was so rare one company in the world made it.
And this is without getting into non bra issues like my shoulders being much smaller than my bust by size and while some alterations are possible, changing the shoulders requires essentially redoing the entire garment if that can be done on a garment at all. Truly fitting professional clothing would essentially require bespoke or made to measure clothes and I'm not rolling in money. (And even if I was, I'd prefer to spend it on weird tinkering hobbies like the rest of you.)
The clothes that fit me best off the rack involve substantial amounts of stretch and are too casual for the workplace. (Mostly tops; skirts are very easily altered).
The office makes it convenient to hang out with people who aren’t friends and unlikely to become so.
In my 10+ years working in offices, I made exactly one friend (someone who I see outside of work).
I would rather not commute and spend that time with actual friends, more quality social interaction over quantity.
(YMMV of course)
I’d just find it easier to make plans when I’m already in the city, rather than wrapping up and travelling into the city and arriving a bit later as a result.
One of those things where I’m happy to hang out with a friend for an hour so if I’m already out, but travelling there only to return after an hour is less attractive.
that’s generally what happens when you / the people you work with are socially awkward autismos. i hang out with several colleagues outside of work multiple times a week, and consider them friends
No, it is quite common.
I'm very much a prefer-to-work-in-the-office-with-the-people-I'm-working-with person, but I've not made many long-lasting friends in my 24 years in the workplace since leaving full time education. Many short-term friends, yes, but not long-term, compared to the balance of people I've met in “hobby time” & similar.
> As another commenter said, nurturing a social life is more difficult when working from home
If you're happy with token interactions, sure. Your colleagues are right there (even talking to you while you try to work!). But IME, and from what I hear others say on HN and elsewhere, those aren't really "friends". The relationships are very superficial. How many of these people would help you move? With how many do you keep in contact when one of you changes jobs? I know exceptions exist, but those seem to be rather rare.
So, if you actually want a deeper relationship, you still have to look for it deliberately. Only now, you have even less time to do it, since you're stuck in the office for 8 hours a day and possibly a few more depending on your commute. Whereas if you're at home, if it's not practical to go have lunch with a buddy or something, at least you can deal with some of your chores that can be time-consuming, while not requiring you to interact with them continuously, like laundry, waiting for a delivery, slow cooking something, etc.
I think it’s a little condescending to call them token interactions. They can be, but they also don’t have to be. I’ve worked in teams which were like little families while they lasted. I’ve had co-workers become real friends whom I still see many years after we stopped being co-workers. I’ve also had co-workers who were token interactions at best. I think it completely depends on who you are as a person, and also who you work with. Even if you don’t become life long friends you can easily have valuable social interactions with co-workers. Just like you can grow apart from friends. It’s all depending on the situation, and most often on you. At least in my experience.
5 days on office places are silly in my book. They’ll lose anyone talented enough to get another job. I’m an in office person for the most part, but if you take away my flexibility I’m frankly just going to work for someone who gives it back to me. Why wouldn’t I want the ability to work from home when I need to pick up the kids early or similar? In my experience the best of both worlds is when you let people work where they want but try to staff your teams with half of each preference or with people in between and then label certain days as preferred in-office days. Notice how I said preferred and not enforced. I my teams it has usually developed sort of naturally, often depending on what is for lunch.
Agreed! At the end of the day, humans at work are still humans, and can form any level of human connection with their coworkers. Long-lasting friendships that persevere past being coworkers isn't super common, but that's because making those friendships isn't super common in general. I think the very real human connections we can make with coworkers is a large part of why it can be easy to confuse mutual loyalty between coworkers with loyalty to a company (which is effectively never mutual because companies don't operate in a way that incentivizes caring about the feelings of individuals).
That doesn't make it reasonable to _force_ people back into offices though. Companies requiring in-office work so that the workers can experience social interaction that they don't have time for outside work sounds pretty dystopian, and arguing for that for one's own personal benefit at the cost of others feels pretty selfish to me. To be clear, I think it's totally reasonable for a company to hire someone with the understanding that they'll be in-office, but the issue with what's going on now for me is that plenty of people who were hired with the understanding that they _wouldn't_ ever have to be in an office are now being told that they need to. I'd argue that forcing someone originally hired remotely to pick between coming into the office or resigning is effectively equivalent to firing without cause, and it's disappointing that it isn't viewed that way legally.
You've never had lasting relationships with co-workers?
A significant percentage of my social circle is former coworkers. I still meet up with some that I haven't worked with for over a decade. Or even several decades if you count pre-career jobs.
It'd be pretty weird for me to assume those interactions have to be token interactions.
I did, maybe one or two over some 12 years.
I've been friendly with most of my co-workers, but aside from the two above, I wouldn't consider any of them "friends". As in we'd never randomly hang out outside of after-work drinks.
Even more unpopular, you have a choice to work. To work at Amazon.
We haven't really hit a true recession yet, esp for the laptop class. I think you will see more of this.
> Even more unpopular, you have a choice to work. To work at Amazon.
I had coworkers at Amazon who never lived near any office and were hired with the understanding that they'd always be remote. After several years, they were told to "return" to an office that they never worked in before hundreds or thousands miles away or to resign (without severance of course, since it's "voluntary", and of course refusing to quit or move would lead to firing "for cause"). Are you saying that this is okay because it's Amazon, and their employees don't need to be treated as fairly as anywhere else, or are you arguing that this should be allowed anywhere? I can't imagine why this would be reasonable at any company, but I can't tell if this is an anti-Amazon sentiment or just a consistent opinion that seems crazy to me.
Ex-Amazonian here, but outside the US. How come refusing to quit would lead to firing “for cause”?
Wouldn’t that be some constructive dismissal, or am I misunderstanding the US labor law?
When I was laid off through the PIP’s way just before the 2022 official layoffs, the first thing I questioned was if they were firing me for no cause, and I collected both Amazon’s severance and the government mandated severance for non-cause dismissals.
Correct. Every job that can be done remotely can equally be done very remotely. At home tech workers compete in a global marketplace. My job requires me to be in the office, not by anyone's choice. It's a legal requirement. That offers me protection should cuts ever come.
Hah. One of my clients is in German insurance tech. They thought the same as you and started recruiting from around the world. They said that German employees are just too expensive. For comparison, a PHP software developer in Germany usually has a salary between 50k and 70k (between 31 and 42k after taxes), which is far from what's being paid in the US. But of course, you can still get cheaper ones from other countries.
Well, it turns out that these specific German business cases, which are hard enough for the average German developer to understand, are even harder to explain to someone if there's an additional language barrier between them. Most people using that software don't speak English, so there's always a proxy between the developers and the stakeholders.
I could write a lot about this (I actually deleted two very long versions of this comment here already), but I really would not recommend that any company recruit too many people from outside of its own country, apart from a few exceptions where that fits the business model. Having some diversity in your team structure can help, but as with most things, too much is not good. But many companies will have to learn that for themselves. I have already seen some that did not survive that lesson.
The laws are just the embodiment of the requirement, not the requirement themselves. Many jobs involve information and processes that simply cannot be handled in a home office environment. For instance, there aren't any work-from-home air traffic controllers. Nor do many companies let certain trade secrets be discussed outside dedicated facilities.
Maybe not _equally_ but yeah, this is a key point. There's not a good way to place this bet, but I bet the day comes when the full-remote advocates will rue that advocacy, or at least, many of the Americans will.
At the risk of caricature, it seems like there are two camps:
1. WFH is amazing and just as good for productivity and back-to-office is just a flex by evil managers.
2. WFH is bad for global productivity and so we need back-to-office.
Seems pretty straightforward that if #1 is right, then full-remote companies will have a massive competitive advantage, and the issue should be adjudicated decisively once more companies implement b-t-o.
The game is rigged. There is always more behind the RTO. Examples include - political pressure to prop up downtown businesses (and real estate), easy ways to lay-off without having to announce it, hiring cheaper younger workforce as opposed to expensive senior workers, etc.
You’re assuming a fair world. It isn’t. As an employee the game is rigged against you.
I agree the world isn't "fair" for most definitions of the word. Unlike many, I don't attribute zero weight to human pettiness that desires a sea of toiling workers as a prestige accent to an executive's self-image.
But also unlike many, I believe that that weight, whatever it is, to be overwhelmed by the colder calculation of profit, growth, etc.
If our corporate overlords could get it done with 50% of the present workforce fully remote, they would, happily. Even better if they were in Bangladesh. Which is another reason to be careful what you wish for.
What about "whether WFH is more or less productive is irrelevant because people hired with the understanding they would work remotely shouldn't be forced to 'return' to an office they never worked in?" Sure, maybe it's more profitable for the company to have all of their employees in the office, but plenty of other things are more profitable that we also have decided as a society aren't reasonable, like paying below minimum wage or flouting safety regulations. If a company didn't think it could make a profit while employing remotely, they shouldn't have hired remote workers in the first place.
> Sheesh, why should it be unpopular.
It shouldn't be, but it is for many.
Most times I mention online preferring to not work remote I get people calling me some sort of corporate shill, or worse.
(Or the posts just get downvoted to oblivion by people who can't articulate their objection more meaningfully than that!)
> Companies telling everyone to be in the office 5 days a week 9-5 (or whatever) is removing that choice.
The problem is that it is genuinely hard for a company to support both (and/or flexible mixes) well, and if you ask for a little of the old way it becomes a tribal binary us-vs-them thing. I work in the office most of the time because I prefer to keep work and home separate, and I find I work better that way, but I'm still working on a remote team because practically everyone else is remote. We have a day-per-week policy (well, more of a string suggestion) but most people ignore that.
> It's called having a preference/choice.
Unfortunately while people are usually all for being flexible when being flexible means doing things the way they prefer, being flexible in both directions is rarer than it should be. For instance: I dislike phone calls and video calls, to the point of significant anxiety, but trying to get people to just send me an email or IM instead has been an uphill struggle with some. Of course I'll clench my arse and take part in a call when it is the best way to deal with a situation (as it sometimes really is) or because there is no choice (perhaps it is dictated by a client, or those up high), or the dailies and other regulars (calls that are habit/routine are less of a problem) but otherwise I much prefer to communicate in person (“in person” in person, not virtual in person) or by text mediums.
If I leave this tech job, or lose it for any reason, I think I'll have to retrain for a different industry, even if that means taking a hefty pay cut, heck even if that means mind-numbing minimum wage work. Working on a remote team is not great for my mental health, and it very much seems to have become the norm. Luckily in current DayJob we have found some sort of balance that works well enough, and I've been here long enough (and I'm sufficiently good at what I do) to be inconvenient to dispose of, and the people who wouldn't take the hint about not wanting to take a call for a chit-chat are no longer here, but at some point that might all change.
It's unpopular because the positions aren't on equal footing. In order to achieve the in-office scenario you HAVE to force people into the office. Because the office itself has no value - it's a building. The value is the people there.
That's not the case with WFH setups. WFH scenarios do not care where people are. They could be in the office, in a stairwell, or on the beach.
So one position is inherently one of control, and the other is one of freedom. Maybe that's controversial to say, but to me it's plainly true.