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Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

> a full return to 5 days of asses in seats is not being contemplated at all, not the least of which because we don't want to lose ~30% of our staff.

Then it sounds like they probably do want to a full return to in-office work, but don't think they can get away with it. If the argument from your leadership doesn't begin with "according to these very clear numbers, our profitability as a business has suffered due to remote work," then it's reasonable to consider what the real reason might be: Wanting to exert control, or the sunk cost fallacy of leasing commercial real estate, or a justification for managers to have someone to manage. Who knows? These things are often not well explained. But anything except an existential business risk is a bad reason as far as I am concerned, when the "resources" so clearly want it to go otherwise.

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> "according to these very clear numbers, our profitability as a business has suffered due to remote work"

Seems like this has absolutely been the case. FAANG and the like aren't gonna to willingly lose 10-20% of their staff unless in office work was more productive. The business will make their decisions based on what will make them the most money at the end of the day. They aren't politicians seeking power, just profit. If remote is more profitable, we will see remote companies dominate the scene in the next few years, but as of now, all management has to go off of is reports showing productivity went down during WFH.

At my last employer, there was a very clear 10% jump in productivity when we went home, and we were still ordered back. There were tax implications to having an office unoccupied that played into that, but I'd bet the bigger reason was that a lot of managers had nothing to justify their salary by while the introverts they used to manage got along better than before.

Profitable for the company != profitable for a given manager.

> Then it sounds like they probably do want to a full return to in-office work, but don't think they can get away with it.

I said "not the least of which because". I didn't say that was the only reason.

This is precisely the kind of cynical reading-between-the-lines that I'm talking about.

> I didn't say that was the only reason.

But, it was the only reason you gave.

From the HN guidelines:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

I wasn't attempting to give you a complete and thorough explanation of our work-from-home policy or the reasoning behind it, but rather just one (very important) factor that's part of the overall calculus. I believe that was clear from the context.

If you are experiencing cynical reading between the lines from your reports, you might want to ask yourself why. Why don't they trust you? Or maybe they think you're sincere but they don't trust senior management? I suspect that they have good reason for that, and you might take a closer look as to why.

You're not telling me anything I haven't already thought about. Remember, this thread started with me saying:

> At my workplace they keep nodding at "hybrid" without any specifics and the resulting fear due to uncertainty is far worse than a clear policy that some (many) people might not like...

The issue in my org is that, starting from the executive level down, everyone is saying "we are not forcing people back to the office", but no official policy has been written and published that lays that down in writing.

Then mouzogu came along implying that, even with a written policy, they still wouldn't believe it, thus the tangent about being frustrated.

But in my own org, today, absolutely staff have good reason to feel uncertain, if only because fear is filling the communication vacuum.

As for karaterobot's comment, they extrapolated a brief remark into a conspiracy theory. Rest assured, when communicating with my staff, there's a lot more nuance that's being conveyed.

Meh, engineers tend to be pretty intelligent. If they are being cynical about management then it’s probably founded.

If we're stereotyping, I think you're overestimating human rationality and the power of emotional thinking, which is also a pretty common trait among engineers.

I’m not stereotyping though; I said if engineers are cynical their is probably a reason. I didn’t say all engineers are cynical or all mangers give them a reason to be.

It sounds like you have a disconnect with your ICs if you don’t understand why they don’t trust you.

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