Comment by np- | Hacker News Reader

Comment by np- | Hacker News Reader

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> Eng manager here. Honestly not everyone is sold on remote being better much less equivalent in productivity or output compared to being in an office.

Ad an IC, I would have potentially believed this if the past two years where everyone was working from home wasn’t anything but unbridled success for the tech industry. Companies literally can’t hire us fast enough right now, and yet there are really still some managers out there wondering about productivity and output? How about looking at the big picture?

> But also a lot of times, the ICs are slackers, loafing around, lying on tickets, getting bogged down and not speaking up

Again, this is purely about controlling others. If your IC is not performant, there are ways of addressing that like adults with performance and goal reviews, improvement plans, mentoring, etc. Requiring them to come in so they have adult supervision makes me chuckle. Are managers supposed to be like daycare supervisors of children or something?

And I’m not trying to rail on you personally, maybe I’m more triggered by my own management, but this whole post reads to me like such typical management speak of “we tried nothing and we are all out of ideas”

If by the tech industry you're including startups, then those all firms with money due to future expectations of success, not actual success.

Then you've got firms like Apple, Google and Microsoft with so much financial momentum they could lose half their employees tomorrow and their quarterly results would go massively up.

The cases where WFH matters are all the firms in the middle. Non tech firms, for example. Firms that are mature, but which don't mint money hand over fist.

I've worked from home for years and it works fine for me, but I also have a friend who's a senior tech exec at a non-tech firm. Sometimes he invites me round for BBQs on a workday, where he is "working" but no actual work gets done. Sometimes he naps in the afternoon. My brother is a tech executive at a software firm, his work consists of a few meetings a day and the rest of the time he chills, takes care of his kid or works on side projects.

For the employee? It's great. For the employer? Yes, you can view it purely transactionally, as in "we pay you for results" but in reality contracts aren't worded that way because it's impossible to write down in an understandable and conflict-free manner. So people are always being paid for time spent, and they then don't implement their side of the contract whilst expecting the firm to do theirs. It's tough, I don't know what the answer is, but to not see the employer's side of the story isn't right.

What do you think your friends were doing in the office instead of BBQ or napping? Extra work, or a coffee with Bob from accounting?

There are a limited number of times you can have coffee in an afternoon. The counterfactual here isn't machine-like productivity but rather, not sleeping when you're being paid to do work.

>>"Are managers supposed to be like daycare supervisors of children or something?"

I mean... Yes, sometimes? Coding skill and emotional intelligence don't necessarily have an embedded linear relationship :D. But more seriously, a lot of team members need anything from emotional support to soft skill coaching to nurturing and encouragement etc. But that again to me is orthogonal to the remote vs office. I can be a daycare supervisor to an adult remotely if need be :).

> Companies literally can’t hire us fast enough right now

This always been the case.

> Are managers supposed to be like daycare supervisors of children or something?

Sometimes, yes. Not every adult behaves like a responsible adult.

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