Comment by brigadier132 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brigadier132 | Hacker News Reader

My biggest problem with the RTO argument is that it's not quantitative. Give me the numbers not the feels.

If you are a massive company, by allowing full remote you could be saving hundreds of millions of dollars on real estate, office upkeep, electricity, etc. You can recruit employees from all over the country so your access to talent is superior and you can afford to pay talent less.

These benefits are easy to analyze, it's just a massive amount of money and time being saved.

Now to go to the less tangible benefits that don't necessarily positively impact the business itself, employees can live in cheaper cost of living areas and actually have the ability to one day own property. Massive reductions in carbon emissions because of 0 commute. Massive time savings for employees because of 0 commute that they can then use to spend more time with family or friends, exercise, or sleep more (all of which could lead to healthier employees). Oh, and they will actually be able to live close to family since they will not need to move to a different state / city. There will be much more efficient use of space, office space is basically redundant when employees can work from home. This freed up space could be used for housing which we desperately need. I'm sure I could come up with a million more benefits of wfh.

To advocate for return to office you need to make all these logical leaps that somehow being together in person will result in us making more money than what we save from being remote and is better for employees somehow.

> My biggest problem with the RTO argument is that it's not quantitative.

I have never seen any reasonable examples of what could be "quantified" here though. To be clear, leaders at big tech companies are not so worried about "number of tickets closed in office vs. remote" or some such related easily quantifiable metric. And the jobs that are easily quantifiable are the ones that leaders are least worried about doing remotely (both up and down the spectrum, from call center workers who can be measured on number of calls, to diagnostic radiologists who can be measured in RVUs).

Corporate leaders, especially in tech, are largely worried about a slow deterioration/decline in innovation, general employee dedication (i.e. employees feeling less connected to their job), and overall quality. Those things are extremely difficult if not impossible to measure, especially since they can take years to pan out. I'm certainly open to hearing counterpoints, but I haven't heard any yet that sound believable to me.

"I have a worry about X that I can't justify in any way" isn't a good basis for forcing people into a decision that (as the GP mentions) has dozens of obvious, immediate, and measurable benefits in the other direction. The simplest explanation for why "leaders" are fighting for RTO is not that office work was, improbably, a perfect global maximum for productivity, innovation, esprit de corps, or whatever, but merely that office work is how things used to be done and a lot of people got used to it both organizationally and economically. From that perspective, I think the burden of proof is completely on those who are fighting for a return to status quo to argue why workers (and society at large!) should be willing to trade all of the obvious benefits of remote work for these supposed intangibles.

He's not saying it can't be justified; he's saying it can't be measured. Big difference.

Anyway I think you're both wrong about this. The reason for RTO is two-fold:

* Working in an office is much better for higher ups because their job is much more talking to people than doing "actual work". If you're spending literally all day in meetings it is worth the commute to avoid Zoom. If you're only spending 1-2 hours in meetings it definitely isn't.

* They have a fear that people will do no work if they're at home. Honestly I think it's completely unfounded, and it's just as easy to do no work at work. But it's a real fear.

Actually I think hn_throway_99 has a point about them being worried about disinvestment too.

But it's mostly the fact that WFH is way worse for management than it is for the bottom rung.

I think that's an oversimplification of the argument being made.

For people early in their careers, face time on site can be invaluable. They get to learn from people who get things done, and emulate them (or not). On-site, they learn from both positive and negative examples. This is simply less effective through meetings only.

The counterpoint also ignores human behavior. The person getting promoted is likely to be the person who shows up every day and visibly contributes when compared head-to-head against an equivalently performing employee WFH. First time people managers will likely be expected to manage people where their boss can keep an eye on them before entrusting them with remote teams. This could create a career choke point.

the advantages you mention are real, but WFH is poor career advice unless you can compete on price with low-cost foreign workers who are just as remote as the person I am paying a US salary to

> leaders at big tech companies are not so worried about "number of tickets closed ... or some such related easily quantifiable metric ... Corporate leaders, especially in tech, are largely worried about a slow deterioration/decline in innovation, general employee dedication

So, why is there so much (corporate anti-)Scrum everywhere?

I mean, most employees hate it with a passion, and the typical excuse is that it makes velocity more predictable, even if slower. Now you are telling me that the corporate leaders in tech do not care about quantifiable things, and are worried about innovation and employees. How can both of this be true at the same time?

I guess I will stay with my null hypothesis that most corporate leaders have no idea what they are doing, and just randomly do whatever feels right at the moment.

They may all be under one company, but I think we all know different teams even within the same org can have very different cultures. I think that's the issue.

Some cutting edge R&D team may have legitmately worries about innovation. the team maintaining decade old legacy code, less so. But for several reasons these kinds of mandates need to be company wide, not just opt in/out per team (though yes, there will be exceptions for the exceptional, as always).

So I can see both yours and the GP's idea both being correct, to some degree.

The number of companies with a large holding or commercial real estate is staggering. Entire buildings were built as investments for companies who are not in the real estate/development business.

I think this is the joker.

If enough companies have vested interests in keeping real-estate prices high in the cities it will happen.

Also, tax breaks...

Notice how many jobs in Texas are on-site only? Texas is aggressively enforcing the tax deals they had with companies to have XX% of their workforce on site, spending money locally to keep the tax benefit.

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