60% (of candidates) looking for new roles bc current company switching to onsite | Hacker News Reader

60% (of candidates) looking for new roles bc current company switching to onsite

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57 pointsmooreds15 comments

Not commuting to work is one of the best luxuries I experienced in my life. I hate traffic/wasting gas/wasting resources. I am game going into office when needed as long as it does not exceed 1-2 times week and on some rare occasions I can make an exception.

I have been telling any recruiters reaching out that I am only interested in remote positions and have been ignoring everything else. It seems like things are shifting, as more businesses are offering remote positions in my area, and these are not HUGE tech companies but often smaller/medium businesses.

Flip that; commuting to work was never a luxury. It was an unseen excess, a cost to your personal time, a cost to your employer for facilities. Having a personal vehicle is a luxury, but being forced to use it is a cost to all parties.

I was actually teaching at a post secondary institute this spring. It was all remote this last year and it was awesome. I've been meaning to take the leap into software development and an opportunity opened up just as the semester finished. The school semester would have had me commuting in the fall. Now, the new software job not only has started my career in software but is fully remote. That's one of the reasons I switched as well.

Alternatively, 60% of candidates prefer to give "return to office" as the reason they want to leave, rather than explaining why they hate their boss.

> rather than explaining why they hate their boss

if their reason to leave was purely due to hating their boss, then why hadn't they left before now?

The return to office mandate must, via logical deduction, be part of the equation, or the person is illogically making decisions to leave.

The title is highly misleading. I expected a study, found anecdotal evidence.

If it is indeed happening, I can only say one thing: good!

Would love to see some serious article/news on it though.

Good news for those who like working in the office — sounds like a glut of opportunities!

I'm not sure you want to work for companies that force people to come in to the office.

Why not?

Because they don't respect you, your time, or your agency. They think they own you, and to some extent they do. At least enough to force you to live in near certain place, and then be at that place every single day for as long as they tell you to. Regardless of the cost to you to make sure you are there when they want you to be

How is that any different than a company expecting you to work for them for 40 hours a work? The whole point is that they're paying you $$$ in exchange for your work. If your work includes being at the office, that's part of the exchange. If an employee doesn't want that, they don't have to take the job (which is what's happening).

Turns out the "you being in the office" is often redundant. The employees now have a proof ("my work output hasn't decreased during covid") and want to renegotiate their contracts.

Companies that disregard what their employees want or need are not the companies I'd want to work for.

Of course, sometimes, there's no other way. "We work for the US government, they require us to come to their offices to get access to X". That's fine. A lot of the times, it's entirely different.

For example, Morgan Stanley blatantly disregards what employees want:

"“But [on] Labor Day, I’ll be very disappointed if people haven’t found their way into the office,” Gorman said. “Then we’ll have a different kind of conversation.”" [1]

This, I feel, often projects into different kinds of issues. You taking an unexpected PTO might be a problem. In my mind, it is emblematic of a work culture that de-humanizes their employees. And that is great to know--so that I can avoid those companies.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/15/morgan-stan...

> The employees now have a proof ("my work output hasn't decreased during covid") and want to renegotiate their contracts.

Are you sure? Plenty of companies have experienced lots of issues with communication and velocity during covid. I don't think you can declare, in general, that WFH was not a blow to productivity. Granted, I don't think you can declare that it _was_, but it certainly seems dependent on the type of person and the type of company. Your experience is not everyone's.

You need to preface comments like this with:

"If everyone had the same job as I do.."

Try and tell your doctor, waitress, or mechanic that their workplace doesn't respect them for making them come into the office, and wait for your common sense to kick in.

The post was about people that are changing their jobs because their employer forces them to come to the office.

I'd think that it was understood we aren't talking about waitresses that are trying to interview for restaurants in their living rooms...

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