The forced return to the office is the definition of insanity
fortune.com
fortune.com
Meanwhile, our flexible options seem to be working, creating a differentiator in the market. It’s been a draw for new hires and a benefit that our employees have enthusiastically embraced. And, since 2020, we’ve had our three highest revenue years, and we remain on track to grow further this year..."
And there's not much you can do to even that out when the price of commercial real estate is dropping significantly.
I'm definitely not saying it's right, IMO it's a sunk cost and businesses need to plan for the future accordingly (even if it means unloading those assets at a loss).
It will be interesting to see how the return to office/remote work debate will be settled by the competitive market. If remote work is such a big draw for top talent (and increases productivity), companies that offer remote flexibility will outperform companies that don’t, since they will attract better employees who are also more productive. If, on the other hand, remote work leads to a decrease in productivity (as return to office proponents claim), it may be the case that the better talent wooed by companies offering remote positions will be offset by the drop in productivity from remote work.
It may also be the case that remote flexibility simply isn’t that big of a draw, and companies with remote options won’t attract significantly better talent than companies without them.
The pandemic ripped the bandage off our collective eyes. People are now seeing that it is not necessary to jam employees cheek-by-jowl in order to extract value from them.
It doesn't "have to be", there's other explanations. For example, maybe working from the office is less productive than wfh, but no one has figured that out yet.
A lot of that wealth is held by very powerful and influential companies. It's not a massive leap to assume it's in their best interests to encourage a return to the office.
A few choice editorials espousing loss of culture and productivity and good old group think will start to kick in.
Remote work has a short-term advantage in that your workers will be more productive (according to the author) so you'll get more done, and also it is a nice perk to offer recruits.
That sounds like a no-brainer for startups who are thinking about an exit that is a few years away. They don't have to worry as much about attrition, hiring is more focused on senior eng (in my experience), and given the relatively lower cash comp they are trying to find cheap perks.
For the BigCos of the world though, it is different. They have an established business that is probably profitable and they need to cycle in junior engineers and train them to make up for retiring/leaving senior engineers. For them, mentoring is more important than IC productivity.
None of this is to say that the author is wrong, because they are arguing that you can have the best of both worlds by adopting a hybrid mentoring model that they are selling.
And actually in well documented places with pointers to sandbox environments (which remote tends to force better docs for both), it's great to let the juniors play and ask questions on missing and poorly documented items - reproducibility and learning is improved.
And I've worked too many in-person places where mentoring is random, unplanned and ineffective because of it.
In my mind this would only make sense in a scenario where the junior is a motivated hard working person and the mentor, working from home, is someone who doesn't give a shit. But the root cause here isn't the wfh.
One of the perks being in the same space is that it is much easier to clear up misunderstandings. Things like body language, facial expressions really do play a huge part in our communication. Especially if people are from different cultures. Also, a lot of juniors are already nervous when they start so having people with friendly body language around helps.
Being in the same space and doing shared activities also helps people gel together. Looking back at my days as a junior and as buddies later, I just don’t think zoom meetings are equal to shared activities like morning coffees and occasional table tennis to blow off steam. I don’t think I would have gotten along with some people if it weren’t for shared experiences in the office.
All this being said, I really do love wfh though. So I often think about how we could get the best of both worlds.
Anyway, my previous company was about 100 people and purely remote. I had a brilliant manager who taught me a lot. We did pair sessions and worked through stuff together via Zoom or Google (really can’t remember what video chat we used). Remote was never a problem.
Now I work at a company of about 200k and I’m in the office most of the time. Every single one of my brain cells is atrophying. I haven’t learned anything in the 18 months I’ve been here.
If you are forced to suddenly teach everyone remotely due to a global pandemic, it probably won't work as well...
My company didn’t do anything differently to help people starting out as sdes and it still worked.
Of course every person us different so some will find the in person easier but I think most could make it work remotely. Especially if a company invests in helping to make it work.
And you can ask for a break if you are tired or need more time.
My opinion is that the two are not really comparable
Maybe it's because I'm a self-taught self-starter, but I've worked from home for all except one year of my 17 year career, and I've managed to be successful despite never receiving any "mentoring". I've had co-workers, of course, and co-workers help each other when necessary, but we were basically equals.
Should I put that on my résumé? ;-)
I can successfully write functional code, but having a colleague from a different background helped me enormously with how I worked and what I did.
Also for a lot of companies hiring the "average" worker, who typically don't write code in their spare time on weekends, graduates need a lot more help to get up to speed.
Is that mentoring or just standard collaboration with colleagues? Code review certainly isn't mentoring per se.
> Also for a lot of companies hiring the "average" worker, who typically don't write code in their spare time on weekends, graduates need a lot more help to get up to speed.
Well, BigCos are forcing a return to the office, and they supposedly hire "the best", not the average.
A combination of collaboration and informal discussion/mentoring. Code review absolutely isn't mentoring. It's the discussions around how to approach things, and other tips and tricks.
>Well, BigCos are forcing a return to the office, and they supposedly hire "the best", not the average.
The average worker is still better than 50% of the workforce. Big companies may get "better than average", but by definition the best only end up at a very small set of companies.
Senior developers do this with each other all the time.
> by definition the best only end up at a very small set of companies.
I was talking about a very small set of companies.
*some would have
The dirty secret of capitalism is that companies become successful based on what customers do, not what owners or executives or employees do. A product or service basically just has to work, just enough that the transaction still happens. The amount of money the company makes depends on how many customers it has and how much it charges each one, not on how good its product is, so long as the product is "good enough". When the company is young and scrambling to take the market, then maybe effort and efficiency matters, so that you can go from "not good enough" to "good enough" faster than anyone else. But once you're already way past "good enough", you can fire 75% of the company and you'll still continue collecting money until the market changes enough that your product is no longer "good enough".
Can you say who they are? Even if they're not currently hiring, it's something worth remembering.
Their argument is mostly based on a single study.
And then they just call out the biases of the CEOs pushing for back-to-office, but they don't acknowledge their own bias as someone who appears to run a consultancy that makes money off of exactly the thing they are arguing is the right approach.
Offices are good for forced socialization, collaboration, networking, and micromanaging, but not for productivity, flexibility, employee's health and comfort, and especially not for work that requires long periods of intense focus.
Productivity is also a relative measure in that sense. Sure you were productive. A farmer a few hundred years ago can have been productive for the times he was living in. Compare it with a modern farm and he's outclassed and not "productive" at all.
Well that statement is difficult to back up because you have 3 short years of data with 1/2 of it polluted by a pandemic and 1/2 polluted by economic downturn because of the pandemic against more than a century of data where offices managed to get along and make money creating products and services just fine with employees showing up at the office.
I love my WFH situation and I don’t want it to change, but I cannot prove with hard facts to my employer why it’s better for them for me to work from home. I would bet solid money here on HN that almost every WFH advocate who claims it’s better and more productive can really only point to their own overall personal productivity with anecdotes and can provide no hard data on how that translates into real improved productivity to the organization.
The problem we have now is that companies want to return to "business as usual" when we know that "business as usual" was stupid. We knew it was stupid before the pandemic, but before an alternative wasn't tested at any real scale.
Remote work isn't perfect, but it's worked very well for many companies and employees and solves a lot of problems. Now that we have an available alternative that works, even if we can't quantify how much it improves things using more than a couple years of research, if companies want to force their workers back into offices it's reasonable for employees to demand changes that solve the many known problems offices have.
For now, I suspect that many employees will simply look for employment where they can get what works best for them and that means companies who refuse to solve the problems of the office will lose talent to companies who are more accommodating.
Please show us some of this data. My point was that people cannot show the hard data and you have responded alluding to data, but not showing any.
>We can point to research that has been going on for decades showing that open floor plans and cube farms hurt productivity.
Again, please show us some of this data.
>We can point to the savings companies can reap by not having to house all those employees and provide for their needs while in the office.
Everybody thinks this is expensive, but unless you are a FAANG doing all sorts of over the top fancy benefits that most companies do not provide, this is actually not dramatically expensive. So please show us some of this data.
>We can show that people who work remotely don't have to worry as much about mass shootings and other types of office violence/harassment.
Say huh? This is really a strange reasoning IMO. Is this honestly a viable threat where you live that people actually give this a worry? If you are going to use safety as part of your argument, cite automobile accidents their injuries/death associated with primary commuting hours. Much more likely to get any sort of number that might convince an organization to opt for WFH over in office.
>Basically, we know that offices are terrible, and that alternatives are needed…
No, we don’t know that. You have an opinion about it, but like I said above, you have not pointed to any hard data that could convince a organization to opt for WFH over in office.
>but what we lack is years of research into the advantages and disadvantages of remote work as an alternate
Here you go, finally something I can agree with. However, this works specifically against your case.
Feel free to start here, but google will give you a lot more:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0013916502034003001
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244020988869
https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/publication/open/265307
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02724...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2255877/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1443885/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1404804/
> Everybody thinks this is expensive, but unless you are a FAANG doing all sorts of over the top fancy benefits that most companies do not provide, this is actually not dramatically expensive. So please show us some of this data.
I don't think there is any research into questions like "do companies save money when they don't pay as much in rent and utilities" because the conclusion is self-evident. You can argue that companies don't mind the costs, or that the costs are small compared to the profits successful companies make, but if a company doesn't have to pay someone to stock vending machines, doesn't have to pay for vast amounts of floor space in commercial buildings, doesn't have to buy and replace office supplies, doesn't need to replenish toiletries, etc then they will clearly be saving money and it's just a question of how large those savings will be.
> Say huh? This is really a strange reasoning IMO. Is this honestly a viable threat where you live that people actually give this a worry?
In America? Yes, sadly, this is a real threat. One company I worked for gave hundreds of employees 5 days off with pay just because they feared a disgruntled employee would come in and shoot up the place. They just said "We'll pay you, you don't have to work, just don't come here!". Every place I've worked for in the last 10 years or so has had active shooter training sessions (at some expense!) and paid for security services (both onsite and on call). No doubt that traffic accidents take more employee lives though! I suspect the difference to a company is that their name doesn't make the headlines when an employee gets in a car accident on the way to work and they don't want the bad press.
Now, if I am the CEO of InOffice Corp and I want all my remote employees to RTO now that the pandemic is over, all these things you have provided do not apply to our situation. While we did not see a marked drop in employee productivity when we moved to WFH, we also did not see a marked improvement in employee productivity either. Also, we own or have long term leases on all of our buildings and the commercial real estate market is not conducive to a reasonable financial exit from our leases and properties. We would like to take advantage of our beautiful work spaces and believe that in office work is importance for our company culture. We have prided ourselves on our culture for 50 years and we believe that it was instrumental to our success. Also, none of our office layouts fall into “the bad” categories that you provided. In fact, all were expertly designed by the most reputable and award winning interior design company that provided amazing data showing how their design increases employee productivity. Sick building syndrome is a non issue as well, because in all our buildings the HVAC is regularly tested for mold and serviced. We have never had a sick building syndrome claim against any location due to our aggressive efforts out of concern for your health. As for your personal safety, our buildings are guarded and all access is controlled. In our 50 years of operation across 100 company owned locations, we have never had a security incident. So we believe your fears are unfounded.
Again, we only have evidence that offices are bad for employees, and that happy workers are more productive, but I suspect that we'll have a lot more evidence about the advantages and disadvantages of remote work in the coming years. I also suspect that employees who enjoyed remote work will be more unhappy being back in an office than they were before they had a taste of freedom.
> we own or have long term leases on all of our buildings and the commercial real estate market is not conducive to a reasonable financial exit from our leases and properties.
That's an example of a sunk cost fallacy.
> . Also, none of our office layouts fall into “the bad” categories that you provided.
If you've managed to avoid open floor plans and cubicles than you're better off than most offices. You'll have to hope that the nice office and culture will be valued so much by employees that they won't mind giving up the ability work in an environment of their own choosing, closer to the things and people that they love.
The good news is that there are a lot of people who really enjoy commuting and working in an office. Some people who were forced to work remotely during the worst of the pandemic have really struggled with it.
You might find you lose a lot of talent, and that you struggle to hire new workers with your self-imposed restrictions of "needs to be geographically near us or willing to upend their lives and relocate, and must love commuting and working in an office environment" but there are certainly some people who will fit that criteria (or at least be willing to fake it), especially if you're paying your workers a lot more than others.
Office layout studies do not get us there because organizations will redesign if they perceive that the office layout is a problem. Sick building studies do not help because they already have legal obligations to provide good environmental quality in their workspaces and most comply. Frankly even your active shooter and security concerns do not help because I bet there are plenty of statistics that can be gathered that will show that a person is much more likely to encounter violence within their homes than at the office. Sunk cost fallacy is only real if the only reason they want RTO is because of RE investments.
Some companies might lose good people, but my suspicion is that this will even out over time. As more companies RTO the remote jobs openings will slow down a bit and soon you could find a that remote gigs become less and less available and harder to find, you will see people that quit because of RTO softening their stance on in office if it becomes difficult to find well paying remote gigs.
To be in a position of real strength on this issue, we need real reputable studies that show a measurable and significant increases in productivity to the organization if workers are remote. That is literally the only reason that has a hope of convincing an organization hell bent on RTO to change. It has to be a significant increase—-eye opening levels. Tiny net improvements don’t matter, because most leadership will convince themselves that they can manage up small levels of net productivity differences.
Until that day we are going to be fighting an uphill battle against a more powerful enemy with an insufficient arsenal.
When I go to the office, my productivity really drops. I am reminded why I hate working full time in the office. Still, it's worth it for team dinners and other "team building" activities. I joke that the thing we get out of going to the office is to socialize.
I like the setup, though. When I do go, I'm basically doing a working vacation. We whiteboard, work on things I wouldn't normally do, have fun, and usually get something accomplished once I settle in.
Same for me. The first couple of times, I became really frustrated with spending a week in the office. It seemed to be a cycle of "Plug in laptop, read and respond to a couple of emails, unplug laptop, go to a meeting, bullshit for the first 10 minutes of the meeting, listen to other people talk for 40 minutes, bullshit for the last 10 minutes of the meeting, close laptop, stop by the cafeteria for coffee, bullshit over coffee for 10 minutes, go back to desk." Repeat 3x-4x a day for five days.
I "got over it" by finally accepting the fact that my week in the office is not going to be productive in my traditional sense. The cycle above is the work I am doing for that week.
I understand the sentiment, but in-office socializing isn’t necessarily a bad thing or counterproductive. Sure, there are introverts who will insist on how much they despite in-office social norms and culture. There are also plenty of folks somewhere in between introvert and extrovert that appreciate the ability to spontaneously socialize in low pressure situations. That socializing can build rapport and overall happiness for folks. Remote work makes it challenging to do that without it feeling either very manufactured and typically self-selective for other extroverts; or a cheesy, clumsily organized “work event” that fails to attract much attention.
What the GP describes sounds much better than all of that. It's not something that's just...a forced overlay on top of your daily work, making everything harder and more frustrating; it's a change from the routine, a time you're taking away from regular work to both socialize and work in a different way, and a chance to get fed on the company dime (which is generally a nice perk).
My experience corroborates this. My team is spread across 4 or 5 cities, 2 countries, 2 continents, and 6h difference. I know none in the office, and yet I still have trouble getting work done because people can’t respect others and speak loudly.
I shouldn’t need to wear headphones 8h a day just so I can have some silence when I can work remotely at a library, or in my apartment.
I shouldn’t need to wear a sweater or warm clothing in the middle of the summer because people need to have the AC as low as they do.
Let’s not forget the need to scramble to find a meeting room because the teams are as fragmented as they are.
It’s absolutely insane.
All of these get worse because of forced RTO.
when attendance was sparser, I enjoyed it a lot more.
This was one of the things that pushed me to finally look somewhere else (there were lots of other issues) and there's no way someone could get me to go back to pointlessly working in an office, spending hours per day and thousands per year commuting unpaid just so they can exercise further control while ironically reducing productivity significantly.
So, I think people who want in-office work should embrace it and advertise it loud and clear. This makes it easier for me to move on and find the other companies who see value in me building out a home office fine-tuned for my own productivity at little-to-no additional cost to the company.
And then as you've pointed out, on top of all that they're paying you less.
One might want to differentiate between loyalty and competency.
Is a highly competent workforce but they're not loyal, better than a very loyal but somewhat incompetent workforce?
2023: "Our valuation went down and customers aren't spending as much, let's do layoffs and bring everyone back into the office."
Clearly the same idiots are still in the C-suite.
Is there a real reason to need folks in the office for most tech work?
I can understand timezones being an issue with remote work, but at that point just don't hire in lots of disparate timezones. Still, I work with folks that wake up when I get off work, so I don't get it.
Communication is the key, and it doesn't magically get better by going to an office. All you get is a false sense of control.
As team lead, I decided to relay this message differently. I instructed my team to do as they wish and come when they want, and to do so with three things in mind:
1. If they are not coming to the office because something is inadequate, they let me know and I will do my best to fix it.
2. Those who are younger than 35 should consider the long-term effects of staying at home and not interacting with peers on their professional career.
Regarding item 2, I don't know how they processed it but all I can say is that the team's WFH ratio is 24% for the last three months.
Overall, I think it is all about creating a working environment people actually enjoy coming to. When I hear about employees who feel conflicted or reluctant to come to the office, I am genuinely convinced it is because one of the following:
1) They are in conflict with a colleague or their manager is an ass.ole.
2) Someone is making their life at the office unnecessarily painful or more difficult than it should (and it is most likely something related to a hardware purchase or shared commons).
3) There is a tangible constraint on coming to the office that makes their life difficult above a certain threshold (e.g., cost of transportation too elevated, medical/health/healthcare condition or issue at stake, etc.).
4) It's a wrong hire, and she/he should be laid off.
Even if the article is entirely accurate, I see no sense in admonishing others for "insane" business practices. Other people making stupid business decisions should be viewed as an opportunity.
The problem with forced return is going from no minimum days to a minimum, this article differentiates hybrid vs 5 day. Requiring any minimum days in the office is dumb.
I don’t think that this automatically disqualifies his opinion, but the onus is on him to avoid the perception of ulterior motives, which he didn’t do.