Back-to-office mandates won't work, says Salesforce's Benioff | Hacker News Reader

Back-to-office mandates won't work, says Salesforce's Benioff

theregister.com

17 pointsLinuxBender26 comments

I don't think mandating anything works very well, you should trust your employees enough to let them work out amongst themselves how best to work.

Personally I hate WFH, so I choose to work from the office. I have a coworker that I work with every few days on stuff and he's never in the office unless he absolutely has to be, and that arrangement works great. No one had to mandate anything and upset people, we just worked out something that works for us and made it happen.

There is no doubt that some people are more productive at home.

There is no doubt that some people are completely phoning it in at home.

There are plenty of people who want to work in an office. And others who don’t.

Leave this up to the companies and choose the type of workplace you want to work at.

Leave this up to the workers to choose how they want to work. It's easier and doesn't require everyone to go through a self-sorting process and switch jobs.

> Leave this up to the workers to choose how they want to work.

while it sounds good, i dont think this works universally. The problem with letting workers choose themselves is that the workplace might not be setup properly for it - e.g., if some workers chose WFH, but there's no good culture for meetings to be held remotely, they miss out or must actively get informed via alternative channels.

Or if a worker choose office, but they're the only one on location (and all their colleagues chose WFH), then they might not actually get the benefits of an office (such as socialization or face to face meetings & body language communications).

So self-sorting thru companies might be a better option.

While self-sorting through companies sounds good, individual preference is actually the better option. Sorry.

> Or if a worker choose office, but they're the only one on location (and all their colleagues chose WFH), then they might not actually get the benefits of an office.

The correct answer here is not to mandate a return to work so that this guy has office play mates. He can re-skill himself to be effective without an office. Catch up or flunk out. We spend our own time leveling up on tech. It's not too much to ask someone to level up on getting the work done outside the office.

> He can re-skill himself to be effective without an office. Catch up or flunk out

aka, find some other company in which he is more effective or has an environment he prefers. Which is exactly my point.

No. I mean cease to work until reskilling.

Seems like if the variance in productivity comes down to the individual employee, it would make more sense to let employees choose, not the company.

Especially in fields that aren't as white hot for hiring as tech is (and tech certainly may not be quite so white hot in the near future), letting employers decide most likely leaves a lot of people stuck with a suboptimal arrangement for them.

The only downside is if half the team is remote, it could cause friction between the innies and the outies.

Choosing a workplace is not always an option, especially during dry years or if you are not US based.

Dry years indeed. My prediction is most people will end up back in the office.

Why?

Because most companies will go hybrid, and it’ll pretty quickly become apparent that the people in the office are getting the choice projects, bigger raises and the promotions everyone is gunning for.

And on top of that if we end up in a recession employers will have the power to say “if you don’t want to work in an office we’ll find someone who does”.

100% remote would work fine, but those are unique situations and many companies can’t/won’t do it.

Yea many startups can save money as well not needing an office.. if you were an investor and the founder(s) said, "yea we are paying 25k/mo on some nice office someplace" you might be thinking, "have you tried remote only yet?"

That’sa pretty swanky office for $25k/mo. My last startup’s office cost $500/mo

How did your multi-person office space cost less than a single-person studio apartment? Regardless of your answer, that's unreasonable for YC startups which "need" office space.

Not bad. I can rent 120 sq ft for $420/mo down the street. How big was that office and where was it located?

what was the square footage?

Covid or not, respiratory viruses are infectious, and they are all over the place. Maybe office and school over zoom unless 100% physically required to be onsite and all participants strictly asymptomatic and not exposed to any symptomatic people recently ?

Every single study has shown kids learning ability was decimated by distance learning. At this point, anybody advocating for distance learning for young children should be assumed to have nefarious intentions since the science on that is settled.

Being thrusted into something with no warning and little refinement is not a good predictor of future success. I think we need to accept that remote learning, just like remote work, may work better for some.

>I think we need to accept that remote learning, just like remote work, may work better for some.

I'm sure you think that, just not sure why. The evidence is in. Children learn better with in-person instruction.

And to all those home schooled who turned out completely fine? What are we to think of them? The difference between remote schooling and home schooling doesn't seem so far, imo.

>And to all those home schooled who turned out completely fine? What are we to think of them?

We think it's more evidence that in-person learning is better than Zoom.

the big difference in home schooling is that you are prepared for such, and usually have a home tutor (which might be your parents, but sometimes it's a professional).

I think remote learning only works for tertiary education, not early to mid childhood education (like primary to high school).

Pod learning, on the other hand; allowed teachers to teach and non profits to provide the benefits of a 6 person classroom.

As you said, viruses are all over the place. Imagine this concept before Covid - living in a bubble and only coming into the same room as people if you absolutely have to, and even then with strict rules regarding physical distancing and medical assumptions based on a layperson's understanding of symptoms.

That sounds like a terrible way to live just because we were reminded that viruses exist.

School???

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