Apologies for the throwaway account, I just don't want this comment 'on the record':
I've worked nearly 100% from home for the last 5 years. My wife works for a major bank, and has had a hybrid work arrangement for all that time. Employees there are required to spend 5 days in the office per fortnight. This requirement is strictly enforced. For whatever reason, we spend about 3 months of every year battling viruses that spread around her office. Every few months someone brings COVID to her office. Flu season is an absolute nightmare. I'm not sure what has changed in the wider human biome, but I don't remember respiratory viruses being something I needed to worry about prior to COVID. I'd only ever had the flu once before in my life, but now we get it multiple times a year. I've had three severe respiratory viruses this year alone, and I'm a healthy, fit, non-immunocompromised person. Anecdotally, other people are experiencing the same thing. Is this something that affects other people here?
What is your location?
Here, in Poland, its mostly the kids bringing infections home. I usually expect at least one week off due to sickness in early fall, and then proper flu (taking around 10 days) in december/january. This is the norm.
I remember a stark contrast with the UK where, I guess due to the climate, the kids dont get sick at all.
Same in France. The threshold for "can go to school" is "no fever".
So you have plenty of kids sneezing and coughing as if they were in a final stage of tuberculosis and there was no tomorrow.
They are taught to sneeze in their arm (and they do it) but not coughing. So they cough as of it was the olympics again and there would be a prize for the one who coughs further.
For the record, I have two children (now students) so they did their share of spreading diseases (to home and at school)
In my experience in the US, it's about the same. Although it seems my house doesn't get quite as sick as yours; I don't think I've ever been sick enough long enough to take 10 days off work.
It amazes me that our culture normalizes people spreading their infections.
What we normalize is not stopping the world every time someone gets the sniffles.
What we have normalized is forcing people to work while sick, so they can make everyone else in the office sick.
I thought getting regularly infected with seasonal diseases keeps your immune system up-to-date against the pathogen mutations and avoids a rarer but more dangerous episode down the road.
But I guess without a serious study my belief is hard to check & validate.
It's the opposite - regularly getting infected weakens your immune system. It's not something that constantly needs to be "trained".
I get a flu and COVID vaccine once a year and essentially never get anything worse than a cold.
I have young school-aged kids, and kids are cesspools of filth and pestilence.
Yes, there was a “rebound” effect where isolation during COVID reduced herd immunity to other respiratory viruses. When people were brought back into close contact, the result was a “speed run” through three years of viruses in the space of one year. It’s a bit more complex than that but you get the gist.
> isolation during COVID reduced herd immunity to other respiratory viruses.
Do you have any reference explaining this? As far as I know, respiratory viruses (flu, RSV, COVID-19) are difficult to develop immunity for because of their rapid evolution cycles. The quote above sounds counter-intuitive to me.
Disclaimer: I'm not even remotely a biologist, and this is a vague memory of some announcements (albeit by reputable scientific sources) a year ago.
This gist of what I remember was that viruses mutate some "percentage" of their envelope on average annually. It's somewhat predictable for more than six months into the future, which is how flu vaccines are developed and manufactured ahead of time before the next flu season.
This unpredictability accumulates, so after three years the viruses become nearly totally unpredictable, not just to vaccine manufacturers, but also to the human immune system. If you get the flu every year, each year the new flu might only be 30% different than the one before, so you have some lingering immunity to it. If you catch it every year, you'll generally get mild cases and refresh your immunity each time. If you skip three years, the viruses become 66% different, which might be sufficient to evade your immune system and give you a really bad case.
There were also a few coincidental compounding issues recently, such as particularly virulent strains of viruses such as RSV going around.
I think the majority of the effect is that and confirmation bias, but I think there could be some marginal effect.
Im hybrid with days in office counted and a performance consideration. When I have used by WFH days then get sick, I 100% take it to the office.
I dont know if this surpasses the effect of fewer people in the office, but I think it is possible.
in 20 years people will still be saying lockdowns in 2020/2021 caused immunity debt.
It's not flu. I just assume anything respiratory I get from the office or when travelling is COVID and so far antigenic tests always confirmed it.
I take flu vaccine shots once a year and didn't get flu since years. Same for COVID but they don't work, I still get it at least twice a year with bad symptoms
If you had COVID (which you definitely had) you are now immune compromised. You can test your cell immunity to see this (CD3+CD4- and such). I had AIDS-level immunity after my infection. This resolves within 2 years, usually, unless you are constantly getting reinfected due to this lower immunity and not taking any precautions like masking.
No “research” that PwC publishes is worth the digital ink it’s printed on. It’s motivated by whoever is paying them to get the result that they want
Whether you are into remote work or not, this is meaningless
You’re completely off the mark here. I’ve worked at a Big4 company before on reports like this. These reports aren’t paid for by other companies at all. They’re internally funded and done by the internal research teams. The motivations behind them are numerous: marketing, having artifacts to help rank at the top of stuff like Gartner reports, and even because believe it or not the people that work there sometimes genuinely enjoy researching and publishing reports. Reports like this are the consulting company equivalent of a tech company’s engineering blog bragging about their new scalable infrastructure or whatever.
If you see a report published by a company that says “PwC did research for us”, then yes, it has likely been influenced by that company. But a report like this that is entirely PwC branded is not that.
I saw examples of both your and GP's experiences in my experience at a big4.
Unfortunately none I saw (sample size: a handful in detail and perhaps dozens to a skim) followed even basic statistical practices I had learned in undergraduate studies at a well-respected university.
There were clues that at least some of the parties involved knew better, but the imperative to publish completely overwhelmed any instinct for academic rigor.
It was dressed up as "eminence", which came after sold work and delivered work (in order) in annual reviews. Statistical rigor would probably help eminence, but there were faster paths to eminence.
Comparing 74 and 75 with no confidence interval and claiming one was bigger than the other was rather bold I thought.
yeah, at least PwC + Deloitte are more legitimate than say KPMG or E&Y IMO
this is judging by all the time I spend reading their "handbooks" professionally
Surely if a thief argues against stealing we will not dismiss their argument just because they're a thief; might call them a hypocrite, sure, but the validity of an argument is independent by the moral standing of whoever is presenting it.
That's to say, one should read the report, especially the methodology, before fully dismissing it.
I disagree with this: when an actor is known for repeated bad faith, it's often a net gain of time to dismiss what they say by default. Only if someone else presents the same argument should you take the time to analyze it.
Saying you disagree with my original comment might be inaccurate, seeing how it didn't touch on repeated bad faith; not that habitual lying would make any difference to the validity of any argument (which depends only on being logical sound).
I do agree ignoring known and mercenary liars does save time.
Given the history of PwC and the Big 4, whether you specifically mention repeated bad faith or not, it's relevant to whether your analogy holds.
I disagree, for a purely practical reason: given the number of people on the planet, multiplied by the average number of views and opinions they might hold, gives me so many arguments I could spend lifetime upon lifetime evaluating were I to take them each in full seriousness.
Faced with this flood, I must then, if I am to get anything done at all, develop many methods of winnowing on which of them I might spend my time, which on this Earth is without doubt limited. Hypocrisy suggests at least two excellent reasons to immediately discard.
First, if I take the option that the person who puts forth the proposition were proselytizing in good faith, then I am left to wonder if this position is consequently so burdensome that even its champions find it too difficult to bear. Never cause harm to any other living thing, and as you extend this past the miniscule deaths of the wee crawling and flying things the broom and mask of the Jain hope to avoid and on to microscopic deaths of the hapless bacteria, it is simply not something tenable, you will fall short simply as a matter of existing, and you have no examples to follow, despite the exhortations.
On the other tine of this fork, perhaps the person is operating in bad faith, and wishes to covertly establish an imbalanced set of transactions or relationships, favoring them or their ilk, all via the mechanism of disapproval. Give away your property and do not be chained by material goods. Why, yes, I am picking up what you have dropped but pay no mind to that, you ought to focus on your own sins, you know, now that I have explained them to you. You may have noticed how so many of the people with rude behaviors will deflect to your uncivilized and impolite faux pas of pointing out said rudeness. A virtue, yes, but especially good to possess for people who are not me.
By that logic, the interesting question is who paid them? There's no shortage of money and headlines promoting working in the office. Who had the money to pay for the other side?
I do not think that it is obvious that WFH is a superior bargain for software workers in developed countries. An aspect of WFO/WFH debate that seems to have been missed among US commentators is that a remote workforce is easier to extend or supplant with offshore or nearshore staff. Brazilian and Mexican SWE contractors, in particular, have advanced considerably in quality from just a decade ago, and can now easily replace US-based workers at half the cost without compromising quality. I have seen this trend taking form in my own, remote-first work experience, and market research corroborates the trend, with US nearshore job offers increasing steadily quarter over quarter since the pandemic, in contrast to onshore positions which have notoriously been more volatile. Europe is also seeing increased nearshoring, particularly to Turkey and Egypt. Yes, there are many nice things about WFH and I prefer it for my part, but it’s not clear to me that this debate is the obvious slam dunk that one perceives reading comments on HN.
Actual quality nearshoring engineers are ~2/3rds the cost when you factor in the added complexities of direct employment or pay an agency to do that for you.
Still a good deal, but not quite as obviously a good deal.
It’s not even remotely close to 2/3rds if you at at all competent at nearshore/offshore hiring. 1/3 at best for top 20% talent.
Once you get into rockstar quality it’s more or less parity since they have all the options anyone in the U.S. has. Most companies are not doing interesting enough work to justify hiring such people.
This is from my personal direct experience over at least dozens if not a hundred directly managed employees over the past decade.
Outsourcing isn’t your fathers offshoring any more if done right. Watching most marginal US tech workers be so short sighted by giving up the only competitive advantage they have left has been interesting to watch.
Trust me, this argument has not been missed. I have read several WFO vs WFH threads on HN over the years, and it came up every single time.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I’ve been remote from Europe for U.S. companies for seven years and being cheaper than people in the US was part of my appeal. In the last year or so I notice more of them have finally figured out lots of South Americans are just as smart and in the same time zone too, so I’m starting work for a local company soon (at noticeably lower pay than the American ones)
This is probably even more than case when you get beyond SWE and into general admin stuff/operations that support engineers and the business. My org continues to have rolling layoffs, targeting specifically long-term employees, with tech roles going to India and admin/financial functions to Mexico.
Fast growing as a percentage but still small on an absolute scale.
India became such a hub for outsourcing because of the huge pool of English speakers in a single country. Large scale near sourcing to South America has less of a time zone issue but only 1/3 the population of which fewer people speak English + a large number of countries with their own tax codes etc. It’s easy to lump Brazilian and Mexican developers together but cheaper to only operate in one of those countries at which point the talent pool just isn’t that huge.
Really it’s Middle America and Canada that are the ‘threats’ except unlike India there isn’t the vast talent pool. Silicon Valley alone has roughly the population of Montana + North Dakota + South Dakota but those states have nowhere near the number of software developers and they want first world compensation.
It’s easy to confuse geographic area for talent but those expensive costal cities are huge: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/maps-extremes-us-population...
> contractors
> without compromising quality
Pick one.
I recently reviewed some offshore code in Python (pandas) that was something like:
s = pd.Series(...)
for i, d in enumerate(s): if i == 12: value = df.loc[i][5] break
Yes, that's right; instead of checking the dimensions and selecting the value by index, they added an iterator. An entire app full of this.
Know who reviewed the code? That's right, more offshore workers.
Can't really blame 'em though. When you're a contractor, you have no obligation to write anything of quality since you might never see the code again.
So, now we'll spend more time unf*cking the code which is a latent expense the company didn't anticipate.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, do you think you are a better programmer than all brazilians? Care to share your github?
What kind of bad faith argument is this? They poster did not make any claim about the quality of Brazilian software devs. They made a statement about offshore contractors.
Poster replied to:
> Brazilian and Mexican SWE contractors, in particular, have advanced considerably in quality from just a decade ago, and can now easily replace US-based workers at half the cost without compromising quality.
I have replaced a few US-based workers and the ones that I didn't, some of them could easily be replaced by other Brazilians I have worked with.
The poster said nothing about Brazilians or Mexicans. He said something generically about contracting.
you got triggered? Guess poster isn't the only one replaced by offshore consultants. I missed that this might be a sore spot for some.
> contractors
> without compromising quality
Pick one.
--
Nonsense.
I've seen companies with only full time employees that have horrid work cultures, which churn out junk, junk, junk.
It's not about contractors.
And hiring out of country isn't necessarily a 'contractor' thing regardless. You can full-time employee people worldwide, too.
Microsoft?
Perhaps in this case they are being “paid” by the desire to retain their home offices.
That’s why I’m surprised to see this. If this was bunk shouldn’t this reinforce what their clients what to hear?
This is an internally-funded whitepaper. PWC accounting and consulting practices are both historically built on lots of travel to client sites. If they can make excuses to travel less, they can charge the same amount for their services but save a LOT of money on flights, hotels and meals. (just an idea)
Eh, unlikely. Consultancies usually charge for travel and expenses (or a per diem).
The thought process is as follows: The customer seems satisfied with the overall cost.But if travel expenses could be lowered, we have the opportunity to reduce the bill slightly while increasing our profit margin.
Thus, it can be construed as a win-win.
Speaking as a former consultant, just… no. The chain of events here is fantasy-land:
1. Consulting company writes article supportive of remote work
2. But they’re lying because remote work increases their profit margins
3. Because it decreases travel expenses, so they charge more for the same work, but the overall package is less.
This is ridiculous conspiracy thinking. The potential profit is miniscule, the reputational cost of being caught is high, and it completely misunderstands how these things are sold. Prices are negotiated exclusive of expenses (typically) and buyers often don’t even see expenses. They often go straight to Accounts Payable and might even come out of an entirely different budget.
Which clients? Generally you should have several with different interests.
wouldn't that be against their own business interest? If an executive or the board of some company want PwC's services, knowing that they'll only help confirm a biased opinion, then is it worth spending millions on them?
Their main income is a direct result of their capability to advise in the best interests of their clients. If action taken upon their advise, and that action leads to a loss of profit, then their clients paid them to lose money. There aren't enough companies that pay consultants money just for the sake of their ego to sustain a company the size of PwC.
> wouldn't that be against their own business interest? If an executive or the board of some company want PwC's services, knowing that they'll only help confirm a biased opinion, then is it worth spending millions on them?
Generally speaking the point is you hire the consultants to get to where you want. You want RTO? Then you hire them and they will tell you how to get there/how to justify it to everyone/how to roll it out.
This is in some sense cynical, but in some sense also just logical. You want something to happen, then you pay somebody to do it! The idea that you would hire some external vendors to... decide for you... might make sense in theory but if you're the one defining the strategy surely you will have made some decision.
These are business people, not sociologists. Though you talk to many sociologists and they'll tell you they're often hired in to justify an existing decision as well...
With fuzzy stuff like this you can make an argument in any direction anyways. It's all pretty self-fulfilling.
You're not wrong, but their value is that they do this for other companies as well and they have staff that have experience and competence in the subject matter. So, in their attempt to support the executive, they find out that they're heading in the wrong direction, they must advice them accordingly and help them come up with a strategy back-pedal.
In other words, if they have new information, they will share that information to see if their clients will have a change of mind. If the new information (or lack of one) won't change minds, then they will submit their advise in support of what they were hired to do to begin with.
These consulting firms, on their own, have had an enormous impact in shaping entire economies and countries. They are not mere props, supporting the ego of an executive. A lot of times, it is the entire board that hires them, or their report by the CEO is presented to the board, not one person. if the outcome is undesirable, they will lose credibility the next time they're used at that company.
I appreciate this theory, but even from the top 4 management consultant firms I've found that many consultants I've met have fairly surface level understanding of things.
My super cynical take is that the people who end up in management consulting are people who really liked making powerpoint slides in school. Just a continuation of what they did all through high school and university. Homework, as a job. I only half believe this
Basically, they will take your idea and make it a plan, without regard to the organization.
You’re paying for validation and cutting through your own management and organization problems.
Yeah, validation, but not rubber-stamping. The validation may or may not succeed.
> Generally speaking the point is you hire the consultants to get to where you want.
So in this case all those companies are paying PwC to conclude that hybrid > in office > full remote?
I'm sure if you get into the details, the answer will be "It depends...", which is obviously true, but also self serving for a consultant.
To figure out which is true for your company, they would come in, spend a few months studying you workplace. This would include several interviews with leaders and SMEs that the leaders hand select.
Given this study process, it wont be surprising that the consultants end echoing back the opinions of leadership.
I been through many consultant assisted re-orgs. Somehow, the leaders who brought them in always end up with promotions and more control. On one hand, yes, this usually gets oversold to the rank and file with promises of efficiency. On the other hand, the consultants are doing what they are paid for: finding a way to get their stakeholders what they want, when the stakeholders dont have a roadmap to get it.
The vast majority of consulting engagements work like this. Someone wants something to happen and brings in a consultant to explain why it’s a good idea to cover themselves and sell to the rest of the business.
A consultancy wouldn’t last very long if they disagree on strategy with the person signing the cheques.
But if the strategy fails, won't they lose credibility? How is it sustainable, if all they do is rubber-stamp?
Check Ernst & young for wirecard or PwC for Evergrande for the latest examples, both banned temporarily or fined for their involvement.
Thanks, law aside, it is so hard for me to imagine why they continue to be in business. Maybe, it is because whoever is being convinced by them of something believes they would need to pull the same "trick" some day.
Another one is McKinsey for their role in the opioid crisis.
They’re paid to support the CEOs hunch, so it’s credible to take action on the hunch
That’s ignoring the blame-shifting or blame-sharing cover that hiring an outside expert advisor brings.
“We used the advice from top experts.”
Ever noticed that HN commenters are quick to point out the tiniest errors in articles that they disagree with yet won’t even give the slightest effort to consider the validity of something they’re agree with?
Office work is good = “There’s an issue with the sample size and methodology plus I think this was written by a marketing person”
Remote work is good = “Go off king”
This is all of humanity, not just HN commentators.
Go off king!
It seems a consultancy has done some research, only to discover that the thing their customers want to be true is true. What a novel development!
I'd always understood that hybrid was the worst of both worlds. Companies still have to pay for real estate, can't recruit from neighboring cities, let alone internationally, and employees have to commute to work and live in expensive cities, just so they can work in loud offices and be micromanaged.
We do hybrid with people in office 3-4 days of the week (and no one on Friday.) Feels like a good balance.
As a manager, it’s absolutely not to micromanage. People build bonds in person in a different way than online. I can give reasons why that helps with work, but also it’s nice to be around humans?
As for commute, NYC subways are great (or at least as good as America’s got…). We have people in NJ, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.
Everything has trade-offs, but it’s common for engineers to mention in the interview process that they’re looking for something at least partly in person.
> People build bonds in person in a different way than online
I see you said "different", which I agree with. But you didn't say "better" - and I do feel that's a mix that goes both sides.
From my own experience at a hybrid company, sample size 1, there's a marked difference in interaction between me and other devs when we meet in person. It's basically like I don't exist and am worth 0 to them before we've met in person. After meeting, even if only briefly, it's completely different: suddenly they respond to messages, are willing to help with questions, even willing to prioritise work if I ask.
Now this could be for various reasons - company culture, me being a juniorish dev, confirmation bias. But it really seems like humans don't account value to something/someone unless they interact with it in person.
Personally I am completely for remote work, although I think it's wrong to say it's strictly better for everyone in every scenario.
Have you tried to schedule some video calls for lunch / banter / get to know each other time? They can do magic too. In my experience it's about taking the time to actually chat to each other when you both have time, not about the presence.
Video calls do work to some extent, true. Just having some form of rapport with someone helps. However, I think there are some downsides to calls:
- The person has to agree to the call (tricky if they are already not responding and/or are more senior and/or dislike meetings) - Calls often seem to have a lesser effect than in-person - Plus other standard downsides of Zoom, etc.
In comparison, taking 2 minutes to walk up to someone's desk and directly address them is almost like a magic trick. Instant "pay attention to me now", thanks to the evolved human brain.
Now maybe overall not worth the tradeoff for in-office vs remote, but still I appreciate in-office's effectiveness here.
This sounds like the difference between going to a singles event to try and meet people instead of just bumping into them where you already are. One is much more likely to actually form something substantial, even though I'm hugely in-favor of focusing social time on doing this outside of work, it's important to have some level of that with coworkers I'd think.
I didn’t say ‘better’ because it’s a value judgement and personal preference. Some people are very anxious about working in person and remote work is the balance they’re looking for.
We work a certain way and make trade-offs as best we can. It doesn’t work for everyone, and that’s okay—non-judgmentally in a completely values-independent way.
In my opinion, startups are really hard if you take them seriously and an in-person aspect helps. There are exceptions, especially if you’re working with people you already know irl (like during COVID) or have worked with a while.
It’s not black and white.
> it’s common for engineers to mention in the interview process that they’re looking for something at least partly in person.
How can you tell this is not because they're aware of present market or even your specific company's preference / conditions and are simply trying to increase their appealing to you and increase their chance of getting an offer?
It's common interviewing advice and CV writing to market yourself according to the job you're aiming for - that includes "company culture", "company values" and whatever other crap helps bias the interviewers in your favour.
> it’s nice to be around humans
Yep. That's what family and friends are for. Work is mainly to make money. Until the time comes when work stops being a requirement for survival, that will always be its primary function.
Making friends can be a nice side-effect sometimes, but is not a requirement.
> How can you tell this is not because they're aware of present market or even your specific company's preference / conditions and are simply trying to increase their appealing to you and increase their chance of getting an offer?
Hybrid is a requirement so it’s more about expectation setting, and most people who say that bring it up themselves when asked what they’re looking for. Maybe they’re all lying, but it’s a pretty low priority thing to lie about and after interviewing hundreds of people, you do get pretty good at parsing out how genuine someone is. Not perfect! But pretty good.
> Yep. That's what family and friends are for. Work is mainly to make money. Until the time comes when work stops being a requirement for survival, that will always be its primary function.
Agree to disagree. If I’m going to spend a third of my life doing a thing, I’m damn sure going to screen for people I respect and want to spend time with. Work means a lot more than the money to me; impact and people are higher up there.
Thanks for your reply.
> Hybrid is a requirement
If they know it's a requirement to work for you, and they're interviewing with you, they either want it or don't want it but have accepted it as a requirement. The former case is the one you say is the majority of your interviewees. I'm not saying you're wrong, but consider the latter case.
A person is looking for a job because they require money to make a living. They know your requirements. They will want to be as appealing to you as they can live with. Since they've already accepted the constraint of hybrid working, they may as well tell you that's exactly what they want.
> most people who say that bring it up themselves when asked what they’re looking for
And that's exactly what I mean by the above.
> Maybe they’re all lying, but it’s a pretty low priority thing to lie about
Which makes it a very easy lie as well. It's harder to lie about the things that have more weight as they tend to be harder to live with.
> after interviewing hundreds of people, you do get pretty good at parsing out how genuine someone is. Not perfect! But pretty good.
This is exactly what bias does to you. You start believing you're good at detecting things. Maybe you actually are, I don't know. I couldn't know. Even if I thought you were that good, it may just be my own biases telling me that.
> If I’m going to spend a third of my life doing a thing, I’m damn sure going to screen for people I respect
I agree. It's very difficult to try to build something with people for whom you have no respect.
> and want to spend time with.
Also fair. There's no need for friendship still. In any case, this is a strawman. I was responding to:
> > it’s nice to be around humans
I think it's nice to be around humans for whom I have more than just respect. That's where friends and family come into play.
At work, even though there will always be a preference to be around people who are nice, it's not a hard requirement.
> Work means a lot more than the money to me; impact and people are higher up there.
This is easy to say from a position of privilege. People interviewing for a job are much of the time at risk of ceasing to exist in society if they don't get hired. That puts them in a position where they will make as much as they can live with in order to get the job.
It's great that you and I can be selective about the jobs and people we work with, but in reality even in tech most people are in the workforce for survival and subsistence first and foremost.
Hell, even though I am at this moment in a relatively comfortable position, in very little time I could go from privileged to desperate and you can bet I would lie (and likely be very good at it) in an interview if it would be the difference between keeping my house and feeding my offspring, and any other altenative.
I’m going to spend more time at work than at home - I’d rather do it with people I like.
I had students years ago telling me ´ I want to work in field x because there’s good money , but based on my experience, I don’t like the people/culture’. They tried nonetheless, all gave up.
You might be able to ignore the people you work with, but lots of people can’t . It if works for you, I guess it’s much easier though !
> People build bonds in person in a different way than online. I can give reasons why that helps with work, but also it’s nice to be around humans?
Completely agree on people building bonds in person, hard disagree that you need people in the office most of the time for it.
My employer went full onboard with allowing people to choose if they want to work from home or in an office, we're very distributed (offices in many European cities, in the USA, Japan, etc.) with thousands of employees, having 1-2 events a year where we gather together has already been enough to develop bonds that we maintain remotely.
I live in a city with amazing public transportation but I would not choose to commute again for work in my life, I prefer working from home and doing the odd trip to the office when I feel like it, it's enough to personally connect with people while also avoiding a lot of the pitfalls of office life.
> As a manager [...] it’s nice to be around humans?
And there is your bias
when your ellipsis elides whole sentences and glues together phrases that weren’t tied together in text, that’s bad faith
Hybrid is exclusively a stop gap to stop people for quitting, no company wants to pay for an office downtown used 2-3 out of 7 days a week, S.F. vacancy rates seem to be leveling off and not improving around 40% (officially)
You have it wrong.
First, think about from which viewpoint your above comment comes from.
Each sentence above could be amended to add "... , from the companies standpoint".
From the employees standpoint it's better on each account. If you understand that companies, and their performance, is just an aggregate of thr employees and their performance. Empower the employees, that's the only company culture worth pursuing.
Your points:
- "Companies still have to pay for real estate" - they need this anyway. If you do it properly you don't have extra space, you have twice as many hybrid people working out of the same space you had half as many full time on site folks. This is the choice of management in how they efficiently use their space. Even explicitly remote first companies I know of have offices and meet regularly in person. This is a red herring.
- "cant recruit from neighboring cities" - Being hybrid actually helps with this, no? I personally know lots of people who work further from the office than they would if they didn't have a hybrid schedule.
- your last point is exactly why people want hybrid or remote positions. I don't see an argument for your point there, only one against it.
-
WFH only is low quality experience for me. No close bonding. Just zoom calls. Hybrid/Flex is the way to go I think. No need to be in the office 100%, but show up if you can.
> WFH only is low quality experience for me. No close bonding. Just zoom calls. Hybrid/Flex is the way to go I think. No need to be in the office 100%, but show up if you can.
I think Hybrid/Flex is the way to go, rather than pure WFH, because of the social connections, BUT it's also utterly pointless with distributed teams.
I'm on a distributed team. I have to fucking go into the office to fucking zoom from there. Plus it's a hoteling setup, so it's even hard to know who's around and my workspace is always a little off.
We have the same. I'm not sure if it's something built into humans but it turns out very much like the lunchroom at school, where the same people gravitate to the same areas/desks. I've probably sat in one of the same four desks for the past year and know all the people around me.
Also share in your experience that I'm going into Zoom with my team on a different coast, or other teams across the world. I'm the only one at my hq. I was thinking about this the other day and it's actually kinda nice - the people around me are on different teams so I get to talk to them about their work and I don't have deal with my team complaining endlessly about our problems! :)
Before COVID I worked for a big multinational that got rid of all meeting rooms because they realised people could just have meetings at their desks. It was all open plan "hot desking". You'd literally have people transporting their sack of meat upwards of 50 miles each day just to sit at a desk on Skype all day talking to people on the other side the room. I found it particularly amusing when two people on the same call would be sitting right next to each other but talking through the screen.
There might be real reasons to be physically present at some places, but I think it's important to remember many places are like the above and the reasons for coming in are complete bullshit. For most people in an office coming in is mainly because they don't have an office at home. That's not a problem for most geeks who generally have a far better setup at home.
I can't imagine having to get close bonding from the office. One of the benefits of WFH is that you spend less time around people who happen to get paid at the same job as you, less time commuting, and more time with people you choose to be around.
I think most people would see not interacting with coworkers in any sociable way aside from video conferences as a net negative. You can’t form relationships that way. I think this is a key difference between people in this conundrum: some WFH advocates just see no value in building relationships with workers past the screen. It just doesn’t matter to them at some core level, and they don’t understand why it does for others (who I think are the silent majority).
You have more time for relationships outside of work, but for myself I find it much easier to work with others if I have some meaningful concept of who they are, and they have some meaningful concept of who I am.
> You can’t form relationships that way
Plenty of millenials and Gen Z can
We've been building groups online ever since we were little
I am a millennial with a few online friend groups and they're not really the same thing. For me those online relationships are loose and impermanent. People are continuously entering the group and continuously leaving never to be seen again. There's some level of trust and stability from meeting in-person that I can never seem to achieve online.
> For me those online relationships are loose and impermanent
I hate to break the news but most relationships simply are loose and impermanent, we just don't usually notice how brittle they actually are.
As for trust, is it really reasonable to trust someone more or less just because they've been in front of you vs not? And I mean that both ways: too trusting of people in front of us and not enough of people away.
> I hate to break the news but most relationships simply are loose and impermanent, we just don't usually notice how brittle they actually are.
Probably true at some level, but I'd wager that's much more common for Gen Z and younger millennials for a variety of reasons, as well as among people who just aren't really authentic, suburbanites, and people who just don't invest in friendship building.
However, that's a bit of a silly comparison, online relationships have some value, maybe a lot maybe a little, but they aren't an equal substitute for a friend in meatspace
I'm aware that most relationships aren't going to last forever, but the friends I have online are notably less cohesive than the friends I used to work with.
I make no claims to reasonableness. We are not creatures of pure reason and our friendships are never totally rational. All I claim is that there's something which ties offline friends to me and I to them, particularly if we've worked together, which is not present for any of my online friend groups.
It may seem normal, if you have never experienced regular in-person relationships (in a work environment).
Even after WFH for a long time I think everyone becomes used to it, but there is definitely something missing.
You really don't need them to be in person. Have you scheduled any lunchtime catch-ups? Got any regular group calls around interests? Just random banter? My work group online is a better experience than I've ever had in the office. It may vary for other people and environments, but "something missing" is not a given just because of remote contact.
In the same way junk food is equivalent to a healthy meal (IMO). There is a reason some mental health issues have been skyrocketing, and this is a big part of it.
Gonna need a citation on this one. Not mental health issues increasing, but online communities being the cause
Not ‘online communities being the cause’, rather ‘lack of genuine in person community and physical connection’ being the cause.
Same as junk food isn’t necessarily the cause of health issues - rather lack of enough healthy, not processed to the tits food is the cause.
Replacing most/all food intake with junk food is going to be bad.
Doing it periodically with enough of the ‘real thing’ to compensate? No issues.
The issue is not enough of the real deal. Which is possible until something breaks because of the alternative, but not necessary.
If you put someone in a capsule in say Antarctica, and they only communicated with other people via video chat - would anyone be surprised if they went crazy?
Hell, I think we’d all be surprised if they didn’t.
The challenge right now is a lot of people (including many people here) are de facto in that pod in a way that they can’t see, because theoretically they could walk outside and have conversations, etc.
They just won’t actually do it, because there are less visible factors pushing them away - factors that in many cases they aren’t allowed to see or acknowledge.
My coworkers are extremely wonderful people, however we aren’t friends.
It is possible, and in many places quite easy, to make local friends without relying on coworkers.
Facebook Groups has been very helpful to find local groups.
It’s also entirely possible, even in the worst ‘food deserts’ to drive to a grocery store and make home cooked food.
It’s also pretty easy to demonstrate how there is a direct relationship between how hard that is to do, and obesity and bad health outcomes.
Oh that started way before COVID.
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What about an unprecedented epidemic of loneliness?
Again, correlation not causation.
There is a vast body of literature that shows that in person interactions is not just correlated with happiness, but an effective intervention for loneliness and depression.
In full disclosure, even setting aside the research, I have way too much anecdotal evidence from what I have seen and experienced to be convinced otherwise.
Does that body of literature say anything about in-person interactions in the workplace?
Specifically the workplace. An environment that a breathtaking number of people do not want to think one second about outside of work.
I havent read about workplace interactions as an intervention for loneliness and depression. It would be hard to run a RCT on that, so you would only be left with correlation.
I dont know why making it a more pleasant experience during work has anything to do with how much someone thinks about it outside of work.
Because not all human interaction is equal. It equivocates talking to a cashier at the grocery store to hanging out with friends.
I don't think that's the comparison I would make.
I think the comparison would a workplace where people can take a break and chat with friends, vs one where they spend their breaks in isolation.
Alternatively, a workplace where a grocer talks with customer while filling an order vs one where they get a packing list from a machine and puts it in a pickup box.
As any stats course would tell you, while correlation != causation it definitely implies there is something to consider there.
And causation almost always causes correlation.
So do you have any alternative theories?
Yes.
Climate catastrophe for one.
Inability to see the point of life when you can’t even afford to move out.
Etc. there’s hundreds of theories.
Seems highly testable. You could if the climate catastrophy and affordability crisis cause the same amount of distress for people who spend lots of time with friends vs have no friends.
It shouldn't be shocking studies show loneliness and depression tracks well with how many close friends people have and how much time they spend with them.
‘Climate catastrophe’ is causing an epidemic of loneliness and mental health issues?
Historic cost of living reverting to the mean of most of human existence causing unusual changes in human mental health?
Do tell.
> Historic cost of living reverting to the mean of most of human existence causing unusual changes in human mental health?
Yes? Regressing from where your parents were, and the state of society they were in is actually quite hurtful.
I'm saying these are theories, just like yours.
I don’t see how yours are theories as they don’t seem to have any relation to the underlying anything, or have anything testable per-se. Frankly, I’m struggling to see how they’re even hypotheses?
I could see how adding a few sentences onto them could result in such things. Which is why I’m asking for you to elaborate.
After all Hurtful != lonely or depressed. Problems existing != lonely or depressed.
We’ve always had problems of some sort. I’m unaware of any time in history where someone didn’t have something nasty to say about anyone, or there wasn’t something bad potentially happening.
Lonely or depressed tends to happen when someone is isolated and/or feels like there is nothing they can or should do to resolve an existential issue.
Depression tends to be the ‘I should hide in a corner and pretend I don’t exist’ survival strategy.
Not necessarily because there is a problem in general.
But the issue is unlikely to just be ‘living at home with the parents’ still, since in Europe and Asia that is and has been a thing for a very long time, and we don’t see such an epidemic there eh? (Or do we?)
My personal theory is that the problem is less ‘the problems’ - rather that our increasingly sedentary/isolated lifestyle is leading to a downward spiral where we’d rather bitch about/ruminate on problems (and ramp up anxiety fear to try to get moving) than actually solve problems and move on, or even just accept problems and live.
Sure dude. Too bad I’m waaaaay too young to be a boomer.
I’ve just been online and doing this for long enough to have had to recognize the effects and deal with them.
They think they can, but it's not the same
It's primarily some mental blocker in the old that prevents them from connecting things online to their real-life counterparts. It's like being illiterate and insisting that no one else can read those strange symbols. I'll offer in advance that younger people need to learn to separate the two sometimes.
Or they (some at least) might have a better frame of reference and “the young” people simple don’t know and can’t comprehend what they are losing. My interpretation is on no way less generous than yours.
Why should I seek out personal relationships with my coworkers? What relevance does their personal life have on work? What business is it of theirs what I do in my own time? We’re all job hopping to chase salary anyway. Everything in business is ephemeral and shallow. Meaningful relationships happen in the real world, not the office.
I want to build relationships with my coworkers because it makes my life better - I like being around people. It also creates strong feelings of trust, which then improves work quality of life, and therefore my work. Furthermore, many people at work don’t treat people they don’t have a relationship with in the same manner as someone they know.
People’s personal life and people being interested in you is just that : people. Most people do this naturally for the reasons stated above.
Not everyone is job hopping, and I’ve made plenty of friends in the office.
Most people can establish friendships that are primarily online. It's not "screen relationships" vs "in-person relationships" for me, it's "real relationships" vs "work relationships". The main thing is that I don't want anything to do with coworkers and would choose not to engage with them even in the office. They're not friends, or family, they're coworkers and they come and go with the money. I had one coworker I liked to talk to, but he got a better job somewhere else and that was the end of that relationship. I would prefer to put more time and energy into actual relationships and not at work relationships.
> coworkers and would choose not to engage with them even in the office
Which is fine and understandable. Some people actually enjoy their work and like spending time with their colleagues (due to shared interests, worldviews etc.).
> actual relationships and not at work relationships.
I don’t see a difference or rather why can’t there be a significant overlap between the two (after this has always been the case for most people). Why wouldn’t you choose to work with the people you enjoy spending time with if you have the option?
please understand you are not representative everyone. Most of my friends are coworkers from various points in my career. I also don't care for screen relationships either.
Who else am I representing? Of course I'm representing myself, these are opinions and I'm saying them, which makes them my opinions. The difference is whether you get to force people to go into the office because that's how you make friends.
For some reason I read your post as a negation or dismissive of the parent post.
I dont think there will be a clear solution to the issue. I think companies will sort into those with in person cultures and remote cultures, but there will always be some dissatisfied minority in each one.
The burden will then be on the employee. If you dont want to work in person, dont accept an offer with that in the job requirements. Inversely, if you want in person relations, dont join a remote company.
That's fair. I was also trying not to be dismissive. It's just a fundamental difference in how we see work relationships.
That part was kind of interesting to me. I have both "real relationships", and "work relationships", but they are not at all mutually exclusive categories.
For me, the more the two categories overlap, the happier I am. I like working with people who I deeply enjoy and trust. People I can laugh with and be honest with.
Afterall, the reality of a 40 hour week is that I spend as much time with these people as my wife and family. Life is too short for me to spend 40 hours without real connection.
> Most of my friends are coworkers from various points in my career
That's fine, but contextually it would seem more important what you'd prefer to be the case, not what is the case.
As in, would you prefer to have a greater portion of your social circle made up of friends outside the places you've worked, or are you happier having most of those come from work?
I like it
However, the way I view it, having fewer friends from work doesn't imply making more friends outside of work.
I spend 40ish hours the the workplace either way. If I categorically avoid seeking or making friends there, that doesn't mean I'm spending more time looking elsewhere. It just means I'm spending 40hrs/week friendless.
I take your point, but to me it doesn't seem like much of that time would be spent in friendship mode anyway, and if you can legitimately call them friends (instead of something more akin to casual acquaintances you met at work and might still have the contact info of or occasionally play games with), you'd need to spend that time outside of work anyway to cultivate those relationships more substantially. Imo there isn't even close to enough time in that 40h block to form enough of a relationship—one that will survive on its own on a regular basis outside that workplace—without also going to a bar after, getting coffee on the weekend, etc..
At least, I'd think the point would be to spend other unrelated time doing other stuff with whoever you have chemistry with, and maybe go so far as to suggest if the only capacity in which you've spent time with someone is at work, it's not really a friendship.
> I spend 40ish hours the the workplace either way
Lets call it 45 or 50 due to commuting. With that said, that seems to be begging the question. If you weren't spending all that time in the workplace or commuting (in other words, if you worked remote), you'd have more time and opportunity to make friends outside of work.
Still seems like a trade of 40 hrs for 10hrs, no?
Of course, none of this stuff is binary time spent.
I'm sorry, I'm not quite following what you mean by "a trade of 40 hrs for 10hrs".
Working remote, for example, you could hang out with friends or family or neighbors in the middle of the day for lunch, the commute savings time is just a bonus.
> others (who I think are the silent majority).
[citation needed]
But let's go to the core of the argument: there are 2 groups, one values social interaction/bonding at work and the other doesn't. One group likes to have a mental image of who other people are, the other group prefers to focus on their work instead. The first group may even find it more difficult to work with someone with "no bond" whereas the other group just goes on with their work.
The problem is, each of these groups project their vision of co-operation to the rest, that's why the first group insists on hybrid and the other group on remote-only (fortunately nobody except some PHBs insists on RTO...). If you can't understand the other group, it's difficult to have an agreement.
My take is: work for the company that is in accord with your values and the ways you prefer to work. For me it's remote-only and there is no way I would change it, no matter what.
Even if a company prefers RTW (or partial RTW aka forced hybrid), that doesn't mean every employee does. The mismatch is not ideal. Additionally, this limits the company to either hiring from a fraction of the available talent pool, or enduring the strife you speak of. As a company grows, these issues compound and become more likely to present.
That's why the ideal solution here is a choice arrangement (aka flex), where the people who want RTO or Partial RTO can self-organize in the office, and the others can self-organize elsewhere.
The days I'm forced at the office I need to wake up two hours earlier, get home at least one hour later, usually two because for some reason I always end up doing overtime at the office. When I get home I still have chores to do which I usually do in the pauses when WFH. Little energy I have left I spend with the wife.
People bond at the office because they have no personal time and energy left to bond outside.
> People bond at the office because they have no personal time and energy left to bond outside.
That’s the goal. You are bound to the company. They want control and for your social life to be centered around work.
I’m with you on this.
As much as I love the many benefits of working from home—especially as a dad—I find the work experience to be hit or miss, often feeling low-quality.
You used to be able to have real connections with colleagues, but now almost everything feels superficial at best, whether through Zoom calls or disconnected Slack messages.
One thing I especially miss is whiteboarding sessions with a couple of smart colleagues as we work on a difficult problem; you simply can’t replicate that feeling digitally.
Personally I found just issues with people not understanding WFH, those with no home office room, those who work on a laptop, always at the same desk of course and so on. There are MANY, but that's not a WFH problem, is simply a problem of training people to something they do not already know even if they practiced it for some years.
The only who really do not work well from home anyway are those with "home issues" (familiar, of mere available space etc) and well, using the office as a way to leave their personal issue aside is not a good thing, nor the purpose of work.
Beside that I think it's totally absurd in 2024 wasting enormous resources to build big buildings used for less than 12h/day, to commute between them in order to consume services (from transportation to ready made food), get exposed to physical ads (shop windows, mega-screens and so on), participating in rituals pushing people to consume fast fashion and fast tech, augmenting the enormous pile of polluting rubbish we produce just to save the giants of capitalism who can't live without the big city Barnum circus... People just need to learn and stop consider the home the place to sleep, a whole home used for just few activities, whole buildings used for just few hours, only to keep people pastured in old rituals is really untenable.
> People just need to learn and stop consider
Why?
> of training people to something they do not already know even if they practiced it for some years
You seem to be talking about something almost completely different than the comment you replied to was.
People need to learn because resources are scarce, so we can't keep up using big buildings for less than 12h/day, to move between them, just to consume services (from collective transport to ready made food, wasting money in fast fashion, fast tech status symbols (like wearable smart devices) in the meantime only to get exposed to physical ads (from shop windows to maxi-screens). Long story short we can't keep up the office as we can't keep up the paper model behind the office.
You find the experience as a hit and miss because most companies and most people as well are not really ready to WFH, so the paradigm they follow it's dysfunctional. Zoom and Slack are good example of this dysfunctionality: chats are somewhat good in certain context to quickly ping someone, to pass a link, nothing more, chatrooms and co are waste of time from another era where VoIP was not possible for mere bandwidth availability. Video is almost never needed, screen sharing it's often needed, ability to sketch quickly is often needed and actually we do not have that much good tools for that but most people do not even realize they use bad tools and paradigm because they can't organize themselves for effective remote work.
Even if individually we might find a good way to work until the entire company have found a way anything is hard.
I'm not a child. I don't go into the workplace looking for bonding. You know what bonding gets you when you get laid off? A cone of silence because you're immediately forgotten. If you are attempting to create a social life through your work environment, you're doing it wrong. This isn't to say you can't have friends at work, or create professional networks, but you should never pretend that your co-workers will automatically be your friends or want to be your friends, especially in competitive environments. It isn't good for you and it isn't good for them.
My experience is the opposite. I bond with coworkers and get frequent job offers, career tips, and solid life advice.
We go hang out, go camping together, and watch each others kids,
It would be moronic to think coworkers will "automatically" be friends, but I have found work to be a great place to hunt for friends.
Also, it helps to have friends in a competitive environment. It can be very good for you and good for them. You just have to collaborate to boost competitive advantage against everyone else. Friends that will talk you up to leadership (with justification) is basically a workplace hack. Not to mention being friends with your boss or boss's boss. Extremely good for you.
I do all these things too, but I don't need to be required go into an office to do so.
My post was in response to someone claiming that not only is it pointless to make friends with coworkers, it is actively disadvantageous.
In contacts of the greater discussion, I'm sure some people like you are capable of developing these relationships virtually, while others are not. That said, I wouldn't trust a virtual coworker a thousand miles away to watch my kids, haha.
I've had it both ways. As soon I leave, I don't hear from those people ever again. On the other hand, I've also made good friends that have lasted for years beyond the employment.
The tone of your post doesn't really help. You're not a child so you don't go looking for bonding in the workplace? Haha okay Mr Adult. Jesus Christ. Forming relationships is such a basic human thing.
So for context so I don’t get accused of being antisocial, my job for three and half years until last year was (at least post Covid) flying across the country talking to directors and CxOs and ground level employees working in the consulting department (full time) for the $BigTech company based in Seattle.
Before that, I spent years talking to the “business” as an in house architect for two companies.
My coworkers are not my family nor are they people I need to “bond” with. We work well together, I do a lot of mentoring and teaching, etc.
I’ve had 9 and hopefully soon 10 jobs in almost 30 years.
Whatever bad things I can say about Amazon (and I have a shit ton of bad things to say about Amazon), they did teach me how to work in a mostly remote culture. The department I worked in was remote before Covid and is still exempt from the RTO requirements. I’m no longer working there
Currently I keep in touch with 3 people I’ve ever worked with and one of those three is my wife.
I don’t want to live in a high cost city and in fact I moved to Florida partially because it was a state tax free state and low cost of living.
The money question is did you work in person with your wife, and do you think you would have started the relationship if you were remote coworkers?
Maybe I'm small minded, but I struggle to imagine people starting office romances from remote relations.
That statement might not have been clear. I meant in my entire career there are only three people I keep in touch with that I have ever worked with (well actually five) including my wife.
I started dating my now wife in 2011. I wasn’t working remotely then.
But at 37, I had an active social life and a large friend group of people outside of work from the gym. I was in the fitness industry as a part time fitness instructor. In an alternate universe I might have gotten serious about someone in my friend group.
You would be amazed at how easy it is to meet woman as one of the few straight male fitness instructors.
My wife and I moved to a new city last year. I make it a point to fly back to our former city around once a quarter to hang out with a group of friends to play cards, we travel together with another friend group at Least once a year and we end up in each others city for random reasons throughout the year and I go to my childhood home/where I went to college to go to football ganes with some of my college friends
> My coworkers are not my family nor are they people I need to “bond” with. We work well together, I do a lot of mentoring and teaching, etc.
What you’re describing is literally bonding.
Isn’t that the job of every “senior” developer? That’s part of the leveling guidelines at every tech company that I’ve seen.
Yes, isn’t it fun to learn that the thing you thought you didn’t want/need to do at work you’ve been doing this whole time?
If you disagree, I’d love to know what you think bonding is.
So doesn’t that go against not being able to “bond” remotely?
Did I ever say a team couldn’t bond remotely?
You’re the one who felt as though “bonding” with people at work was beneath you — seemingly regardless of whether it was in person or remote — and who then went on to describe things you do at work which were excellent examples of bonding.
This all started from the original reply I commented on..
> WFH only is low quality experience for me. No close bonding. Just zoom calls. Hybrid/Flex is the way to go I think. No need to be in the office 100%, but show up if you can.
Yeah that person (who was not me) said you can’t bond remotely.
You said you didn’t care about bonding then went on to describe the bonding activities you participate in.
Bonding too closely with your coworkers will only make it easier for them to find a spot to drive the knife into.
I have a meetup I attend weekly to bond over tech stuff with more friend type people. Coworkers are coworkers. Nothing against them but they're not my buddies.
Having no other option besides willingly working in such an extremely toxic environment seems like the bigger issue, though.
Although I’m kind of curious. Presumably those other people you interact with also have jobs? Would you still feel the same way about your coworkers if you worked with them instead?
It looks like you’re working in a very toxic environment if you consider all your coworkers like that - you might want to leave.
I’ll add that being disappointed with people is something that will happen outside of work as well : failed romantic relationships, family, etc.
Whenever you get close to people, there’s a risk something can go bad.
Tell this to Kirk, Spock, and McCoy
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There is nothing wrong with bonding with your coworkers and enjoying your work.
Why would anyone want to work a job with people they dont enjoy? Thats miserable.
You might as well tell poor people to ‘stop being poor and get rich, so sad’.
Sure, but how?
"Office culture" has been used as an excuse for many bad decisions for a very long time.
Dont forget the invention of open spaces!
Open spaces is proven to be inferior to closed offices, but cost cutting and flexibility in layout is most important for HR.
Cube Crawls is a thing because of culture
Weird comments.
There's no major reported difference between hybrid and fully on-site in most categories, and the only thing they say about culture is that "[90%] of hybrid employees say that the culture at their companies promotes community, collaboration, inclusion and belonging", without bothering to report the statistic for fully on-site or fully remote employees.
That may support their assertion ("the idea that being on-site all day every day is necessary to establish and sustain a strong culture is a myth"), but if the other categories were in the same range as with the other questions, it's not really saying much more than that.
Research shows us statistical trends but what we care about most is what works for us. That can be answered only by an individual. In my case, I went from "hurray! work from home!" at the start of Covid lock-downs, to "I miss the white-board discussions at office". Fortunately, the tech industry is now large and diverse enough that you can find work that suites your style.
This is the key thing for employers to understand.
Be flexible to your employees style, and you'll have an easier time attracting and keeping happier , better performing employees.
The employees desired style is what matters, not the employers.
To the people complaining that they can't make friends or maintain meaningful relationships outside of physical in-office contact, I wanna point them out to the classic SNL sketch "Romano Tours" where Adam Sandler is a tourism operator selling trips to Italy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbwlC2B-BIg
Me, I have zero issues bonding with remote colleagues but then again, I have local friends too with whom I connect mostly through telecommunication tools (like WhatsApp) and occasionally meet in person.
Quoting from the SNL sketch, and I can't stress this enough: "If you are sad where you are and then you get on a plane to Italy, in Italy there will be the same sad you from before".
What employers haven't considered is that when employees come in they spend the majority of time with each other. That means that the culture they are building is one of us against them, where them is management and the upper echelons of the company (or any other group that doesn't seem to have their best interest at heart).
Once they start working from home they are effectively isolated and not spending that time with each other. So I think we could argue that working from home is working in favour of the employer.
> These may seem like marginal differences
Yep. A difference of a couple of percentage points even with a sample size of 20,000 is tiny. While they have taken it to mean that hybrid is "better" than in-office, I would take it to mean that they are essentially identical across the breadth of the survey.
For your particular industry or organisation there may be significant variation, but you'll need to find that out for yourself.
I think that the adverse effects of allowing WFH pale in comparison to moving up and down the spectrum of strengths of companies within certain industries, to the point that WFH/WFO seems like an irrelevant question unless you're currently at the top of your industry.
Here's my example: I work in the space industry, and the difference between SpaceX and every other vehicle provider is insane. The speed, quality, and average performance of people working within SpaceX's culture cannot be matched by anyone else flying hardware right now. It's gotten to the point where spaceflight feels like an elaborate farce, or a welfare program for aerospace engineers, unless you're working on a SpaceX project. I'm almost embarrassed to collect a paycheck, and I'm considered a pretty decently high performer at my own company.
So--if my company chooses to WFH or WFO, so what? Maybe we lose some competitive edge with WFH, but all the employees are happier and retention may improve a little bit. We're not going to compete with SpaceX. We don't have the intellect or experience necessary.
My guess is that this is how it is across all industries. There are a handful of companies competing for the "top dog" spot, and at these companies, WFO/WFH is a relevant question. If WFH causes you to lose competitive edge, it's worth disallowing in favor of retaining only hustlers who are willing to go for the throat and win, and thus either make insane profits or redefine technological standards for the next decade. For most of the other companies within the industry, it doesn't matter. You're not the top dog, and your corporation doesn't have the DNA necessary to get there. By definition 50% of employees are worse than the median quality employee, and yet they're still employed; how many are at your company? You may as well allow WFH to keep your people happy.
Sure, you can eke out another 5-30% performance increase by mandating them back to the office, and that's the equivalent of 0.001% performance increase at whatever company is currently truly dominating in your industry. Is it worth it? Life is short.
I find the fundamental argument flawed. Your employer is allegedly not competing with SpaceX in either case. Howver, you're still supposedly competing with other companies in your bracket? In that context, it could give a competitive advantage.
Yes, it could, but my belief is that as long as the company isn't about to go out of business, it doesn't matter because the competitive advantage within our bracket is irrelevant when compared to the top of the entire league. In order to actually increase the size and profitability of the company to a hugely notable degree, they'd need a hell of a lot more changes than just WFH->WFO.
The notion that a 25% across the board performance increase isn't a huge deal just because supposedly there's some other company in the same industry that's better makes no sense.
Sorry, I should have been more specific in my last paragraph. I was talking about individual employee performance, not an across-the-board increase in performance across all company metrics like gross profit, etc. A 25% across the board performance increase would be a huge deal.
If you know someone at work that doesn't really make much of a difference, there's not rally a big difference between him at 100% capacity and him at 70% capacity. Either way, he's not affecting the company baseline that much. That's how I feel about most companies I've interacted with so far. From what I've seen, your average lifer at a subcontractor for NASA doing 30% better on his monthly performance is about the same as your average SpaceXer doing 0.001% better.
Let me share some recent experience.
After 4 years of working remote, I changed to a new company that’s doing hybrid. Didn’t need to move or anything like that.
The commute sucks just by virtue of existing. You can’t beat the ease of swapping laptops.
But I feel more onboarded into the company after a month of hybrid than I did after maybe 6 months at the old job. Kvetching over lunch is just nice. Getting to hear about the aches and pains of the codebase and various processes without having to schedule a bunch of 1on1s and polluting my calendar with meetings is fantastic. It’s my job to solve these things systemically and just being around to see the painpoints when people drop their guard and don’t feel like their words are recorded forever in a slack channel is freaking amazing. It makes my job so much easier and less forced.
The best part is that my day is no longer full of meetings because we can resolve a lot of things informally.
And yes I absolutely need the flexibility to work from home when it’s time for heads down focus mode.
It sounds like you started very recently. I would be interested in your thoughts after working like this for 6 months - a year.
I second this.
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So, apparently, do you?
> The researchers found that over three-quarters of hybrid workers feel like they belong, compared to 74% of fully on-site workers
lol
Default being remote or in person doesn't create company culture.
Businesses in person or remote both have to learn to do what it takes to build company culture.
Everyone knows this is a way to do a silent layoff without a WARN notice or severance. Or a way to discriminate against older workers with families, who don’t live in city cores. Everything else used to justify RTO policies is a lie.
I definitely trust PwC on matters of "culture."
Let me know when you can find a work from home advocate that admits it is rife with abuse.
Until then, it all sounds like game to me.
You'll have to define "abuse" more concretely for this to have any meaning.
Do most knowledge workers actually put in exactly 8 full hours a day on work tasks working from home? Probably not.
But as a professional software developer since the 1990s the same was true for myself and virtually everyone I know when I worked in an office.
The way I 'waste' time is different now, but arguably a lot better (eg. me taking a nap just before or just after lunch improves my productivity in the afternoon a lot more than me fucking off on slashdot for extended periods of time in the office did back in the day.)
(And whether or not this not-directly-related-to-work downtime is really a time waste is extremely debatable, as switching thorny problems into the subconscious realm often turns out to be one of the best ways to actually power through them in my experience).
What I consider abuse is Lying and padding resources. I know people who will turn an 8 hour task into a 40 hour task, and spend the difference hiking. The other grift is when people have multiple projects to tell each manager that the workload is high on the other project right now.
This isn’t an exclusively remote problem though. This happens in-office, too.
It’s extremely easy to pad a week with meetings, “I’m checking/organizing my email”, “I need to double check code from last week”, etc… if you wanted to burn time.
Sure the remote worker has the opportunity to go hiking, but the business impact is the same. Except at least the hiking wastes less time from others.
Sure, lots of people waste time in office too. I just see it a lot worse from friends and colleges who are hybrid and WFH.
This is not a WFH peculiarity, is the bad company architecture to blame, where workers can extort time and managers can't see that. It might happen more FH than FO simply because managers tend to have little to know digital culture, but it's still not a work mode peculiarity.
The real issue is that with the big RTO push to save cities, who can't be saved BTW, avoided baking a WFH culture where people take WFH seriously providing an office room per worker at home, with all things needed there, instead of working with craptops anywhere. It's not different from people who take a photo of an email and send it via WA because they do still not having a clue about CC/BCC.
Funny you say that. When I worked in the office, I knew people that turned 8 hour tasks into 40 hour tasks, and spent the difference slacking off.
The most productive teams I worked with (only one exception) were mostly remote.
And yes, I also worked with remote teams that were slacking off.
What predicates performance in my experience is not if people are remote or not. It is the quality of the people hired and low churn.
Why can't your managers or engineering leaders tell who is underperforming their potential? That seems just as much of a problem for in-office folks, if not moreso - the in-office folks can get away with simply looking busy.
> The other grift is when people have multiple projects to tell each manager that the workload is high on the other project right now.
Your problems might be a little bit more deeply rooted, WFH abuse sounds like a symptom and not a cause.
You’re right.
I work far more from home on average. When I worked from the office I had so many interruptions. We’d also take Wednesday and Friday afternoons to play table-top games. There was table tennis and foosball. Sometimes we’d all go out for lunch and it’d take 60-90 minutes. Now I just eat lunch at my computer, I don’t table top game or socialize. I just code and zoom all day.
The abuse is real, but since I’m not commuting it’s a great trade off of an hour wasted each way.
What a great response.
And don‘t forget the 2 x 30 minute commute you converted to a solid hour of real work.
Yes, the abuse is real ;-)
It might be workplace specific. Most co-workers I know who went remote are 25-50% as productive as before. Only one or two did I suspect had a 2nd job. The rest were spending most of their workdays hiking, sailing, or playing with their kids.
Given the choice, I would rather lead an in office team 10/10 times.
Anecdote for exactly the other side: most co-workers I know who went remote are 50% more productive as before. They don’t have to waste their preciously short lives in pointless office drama, pointless meetings that could have been emails, waste their lives in cars commuting to a soulless office complex because an incompetent manager thinks that butts-in-seat time makes for a productive workforce.
I would 100% lead a full remote team, and have done so, and will never go back.
Im not surprised. Like I said, it is likely workplace specific based on culture, management, and hiring. Some places you can coast for years working 10 hours a week.
I’ve been remote for 15 years with the past 3 in a C level position.
People fuck around in the office and they do at home too. Expectation management and selling yourself (aka know how to communicate) is all that matters. I can sleep in, tell people the truth, and life is good.
Offices are fucking expensive. It burdens IT and it’s a performance art at the end of the day anyway.
The boards job is to fire me. As long as I maintain my roadmap and provide evidence of progress nobody who matters has time to think about this shit.
Manage your SG&A expenses, risk, and be nice to legal. You’ll be fine.
Thats cool for you, but I'm speaking from my experience about my team's productivity falling off a cliff. Employees that do work when in the office, but wont even respond to email for days when working from home.
That may me a problem of the pepple tou hired, and how you lead them, instead of being a problem of where they work.
Perhaps they were slacking in the office as well, and only giving you the impression that they were busy. You might only be annoyed now because the mask is off.
If an employee cannot handle working from home then they can voluntarily return to office or be terminated for cause.
I’ve been leading a team remotely since March 2020 and have had no issues with my team that wasn’t cleared up after a quick conversation in our 1-1.
That's great for you. I have had good experiences long ago in other companies.
In my current company, team leads have little input on employee performance, and nobody has been fired or PIPed in my 100 person department in the last 10 years.
The primary thing that incentivized worker performance was social pressure and visibility from an in person environment.
You might say this is a management problem, and yes, I would agree. However, it still stands that this management problem is greatly exacerbated by hybrid and remote work.
Please understand you are not representative of everyone. I'm aware of several teams that were heavily remote far before COVID. They worked fine then, and they work fine now.
My very first sentence was saying I think it is different in different workplaces....
Thats my whole point.
What are you calling abuse? Not showing up for “company mandated fun time o’clock”?
Also, I hate to break it to you, but the employees that are “genuinely” abusing WFH and shirking work responsibilities are doing the same thing in the office.
Absolutely. In the WFH vs Office debate people seem to forget that time-abusing employees always exsisted. I've had coworkers at past jobs who sat next to me and nobody on the team coukd come up with anything they did for a year besides browse the internet and plan vacations.
Do you want to optimize for output or optics?
If output, WFH. If optics, WFO.
If WFH is being abused then that's a problem with who you're hiring.
Comment of the year. Know your requirements and find a match.
Like, people working multiple jobs at once? Doesn't that become pretty obvious?
I worked 4 remote jobs for years long ago - I found companies with the same problem and resold my work. I probably put in 60-80 hours a week but made a killing.
Now ADP and similar companies offer monitoring services to HR to weed these people out. You might get caught now.
Define "abuse" first. Bonus if you add how its different from all the abuse you can do when working in an office.
(I'll define "abuse" in my post after you define yours, I asked you first.)
Yeah, some will.
If managers are incapable of detecting and handling that unless people are in their eye line in the office then the company has bigger problems.
I don’t think remote work encourages bad behavior on the whole. It may make what was already happening more obvious. But I think there are few good workers who become bad when remote. And they can stay in the office.
I think it makes poor management more obvious and bad techniques like enforcing butts-in-seats as a your main way of enforcing productivity.
I’ve seen plenty of people in my career do nothing or next to nothing all day. But they were in their seat clicking on things or typing so they must be “productive”.
Instead of forcing everyone to be in office, how about getting better managers through training or hiring?
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Anecdotally, knowing many people that work from home, there is definitely abuse of the system. And those people are ruining it for the rest of us! But it would be absurd to think that if everyone was really more productive at-home, companies would still be forcing everyone back in the office. I don't believe the conspiracies—most workplaces really do want collaboration and productivity. The only bit I'll buy is that some are doing it as a form of soft layoffs. But I find it hard to believe that every company doing this would act against its own interests in terms of productivity.
I've seen many absurd things working for various companies. I've personally seen millions of dollars set on fire over pet projects and egos, or petty power struggles. A sufficient justification to force people back into the office is because it gratifies a powerful man's ego to see people working in front of him.
Yes, absolutely.
There are known incentive mechanisms behind the behavior which are neurobiological and neuroimmunobiological!
This review paper from 2017 is really quite something. Aggression, Social Stress, and the Immune System in Humans and Animal Models by Takahashi, Flanigan, McEwen & Russo — https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/behavioral-neuroscience...
Stress begets inflammation. Inflammation is suffering. Subjugating others secretes antiinflammatory cytokines; “Winning” is relief.
A stark and beautiful quote from the paper: “In animals with hierarchical societies, aggressive behavior is thought to help individuals gain and maintain higher social status (Box 2). It has been shown that aggressive behavior, especially the experience of winning, has rewarding properties in animals and repeated aggressive experience may lead to compulsive, pathological aggression that is highly reinforcing (Fish et al., 2002; Falkner et al., 2016; Golden et al., 2016, 2017).”
>But I find it hard to believe that every company doing this would act against its own interests in terms of productivity
Ever worked in a company?
Are you actually going to reply to the substance of my comment or just do a Reddit like sarcastic reply? Yes, I am middle age and have worked for multiple companies. I've seen co-workers, friends, and even family abuse the opportunity to work from home. Which as I said is unfortunate because it hurts everyone who uses it wisely.
Show me or gp that there is no evidence of abuse. Anecdotally, I've seen it.
> I am middle age and have worked for multiple companies
Same. If you never saw a company kill teams productivity with completely retarded decisions and petty office drama, I think you might just have been lucky.
I think your original comment is entirely valid. It seems anyone who questions WFH gets downvoted.
I’m involved with several startups, and I can assure you there are clear advantages to people spending time together. WFH or not, people meeting and strategizing in person is incredibly valuable.
I also think people need to make a better distinction between remote and distributed teams. Because of the above opportunity to meet in person from time to time, and also because of the additional communication challenges of a distributed team with multiple time zones.
There’s an assumption that all work can be perfectly partitioned and assigned to people. But more often than not, innovation requires constant exploration of ideas and negotiation of resources being invested. more cohesive teams are way more likely to innovate.
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>The only bit I'll buy is that some are doing it as a form of soft layoffs. But I find it hard to believe that every company doing this would act against its own interests in terms of productivity.
WRT "in terms of productivity"?
Companies do this all the time, and especially when they lay people off. (soft or otherwise)
There's absolutely a loss of productivity as everyone has to sort out the logistical changes while doing the things they normally do.
>But it would be absurd to think that if everyone was really more productive at-home, companies would still be forcing everyone back in the office.
To draw this conclusion one would have to assume that companies are measuring productivity correctly.
Or that the companies are acting rationally, and we know that's never always true.
> To draw this conclusion one would have to assume that companies are measuring productivity correctly. Or that the companies are acting rationally, and we know that's never always true.
So is your argument that bad management is so endemic that every company is making a poor decision about its productivity when it orders workers back to the office? I think some companies want to do soft layoffs. And I think others actually see real benefits of working in-person.
We don't have to take such extreme positions. Doubtless some people are more productive at-home, some people are less productive at-home. And some companies are actually seeing productivity decreases when their teams are remote.