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Yeah but we wanted to work from home not hybrid bullshit. This story is pandering like we won but they are still forcing me to go to an office every week for no good reason. This is just propaganda. The whole conversation in the thread has even shifted from talking about working at home full time to hybrid being ok. Insane
hear hear. Offices are outmoded, office managers are outmoded, paying for parking is outmoded.
All of it is horseshit, and like horseshit should be deposited indiscriminately and walked away from without looking back.
Rage on, fellow rager.
Yeah but we wanted to work from home not hybrid bullshit. This story is pandering like we won but they are still forcing me to go to an office every week for no good reason. This is just propaganda. The whole conversation in the thread has even shifted from talking about working at home full time to hybrid being ok. Insane
The comment I’m replying to needs to be upvoted much more than it is.
I don’t know why you think that’s all propaganda, i personally like hybrid work a lot more as well. I like my office, i like being able to go for a coffee with my colleagues and so on. I do like working from home as well - but i’m totally okay with being 1-2 days in the office. However, we do have people working 90% from home - they have to come in to the office though for various things they have to do. Printing large format plans, etc, etc. You can’t just assume 100% home full time works for everyone and shift the goalpost.
I think it should be a choice not 100% at all. I’m personally upset because I was told it was ok to be fully remote so I adjusted my life then once it wasn’t convenient for my company anymore they changed the rules on me and everyone else and gaslighted us all about the real reason.
And I love not even knowing where my office is, different strokes…
DefeatedMildly annoyed CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stayFTFT.
They have their wealth and their heads are still attached to their necks - there is nothing “defeated” about them.
I offered to work from home yesterday because I have bronchitis and no voice, so I told my manager it was that or I go off sick and stay there until I deem I feel better, that half a loaf was better than none, and she said “well I don’t want to set a precedent”, so I told her that I was sick then and won’t be back until I feel better. I’m the only one who can do my job, so she’s right fucked. She’s like an alien wearing a skin suit trying to pretend to human.
I’ve had a personal policy of not working from home when I’m sick, even before the pan. I want solid recovery time because experience has taught me that doing anything else just keeps me sick longer. Take all the time you need, even if you only need it a little bit but could otherwise power through. She put herself and you in this situation. Reap all the recovery time needed to return at 100%.
She has understaffed us to a criminal degree all because she gets a bonus if she comes in under budget. You are correct, I will take all the time I need. I had to go to urgent care last night for a nebulizer so I’m definitely still not well, it’s actually resolving pneumonia it turns out.
The manager doesn’t get to make the decision. She’s probably going to have to go argue with her manager that also likely has no control. Stand your ground, they don’t want to fight on this hill. -source, a people manager of hybrid teams at a company that insisted on on-site.
Seems like she did set a precedent anyways haha just a worse one than before
the place I work has tried RTO policies several times now - with very limited success. well over 90% of all white collar jobs can be done from wherever you can get internet so your VPN software will function. the customer facing part of the business has to be there 100% of the time, they dont have a choice, that’s how the business model is designed. I go in a few days a week but honestly dont ever actually need to be there. maybe 2 days a month, tops, is my presence absolutely required.
the really interesting bit, which the article didnt touch on (not much of an article to begin with) is that there is a commercial real-estate bubble. the big buildings in the downtown business district/cores of most cities, that real-estate isnt worth much if there’s no one renting the space. businesses that used to rent the space no longer need to because all of their employees work from home now. the people who invested in those big buildings are not seeing a return on their investments - and they are unhappy. that is, imho, a big driver behind the RTO movement.
the people who invested in those big buildings are not seeing a return on their investments - and they are unhappy. that is, imho, a big driver behind the RTO movement.
And those people are largely of the same class as the corporate executives and shareholders pushing RTO policies which ties a nice little bow on top of the whole situation. Rich people are losing money when employees work from home and so WFH has to go.
Given the housing crisis, it only makes sense to convert that real estate into residential units.
Those two are not as related as they at first seem.
For one, the plumbing required is different, as in literally offices don’t tend to have bathrooms with toilets and showers inside every office space. Also the lighting would be cut off for all the inside units. Communal bathrooms and no windows works for work but not as good for home.
For another, a lot of the varying housing crises (there are multiple types) relate to affordability bc of being bought up by corporate interests. Another type relates to weird zoning laws of what types of homes are allowed to be built in certain areas - and for these at least, there’s nothing stopping good homes from being made except again profits.
So it’s not impossible, but there are challenges. Mainly, how can already rich people find a way to make even moar monay? Oh yeah and something something the poors get whatever too.
Unfortunately only like 10% of them are viable for conversion. Office buildings and residential buildings have very different needs and it’s expensive as fuck to add all the extra shit needed for residences.
I would love to see an actual study proving it’s possible for only 10% of them because I’ve lived in a building built like an office one and I’ve done renovations in it and there’s very little that’s different from a residential building with concrete floors once everything’s been stripped down.
It’s even more expensive as fuck to build a residential building of the size of those office buildings as well and once converted is guaranteed income forever, no pandemic stops people from living in it and there’s always people willing to rent, contrary to businesses that can change their policies or simply go bankrupt.
I come with receipts: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/converting-vacant-office-buildings-into-apartments-60-minutes/
But only around 10%-15% of office buildings nationwide can realistically be transformed to housing, according to economist Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate at New York’s Columbia Business School.
An economist…
Get me an engineer’s or architect’s opinion and then I will give it some credibility.
I mean, you’re welcome to provide a source refuting mine from an engineer or an architect. I provided my source, where’s yours?
That’s what I’m saying, your source is from someone in a field unrelated to the one responsible to make the modifications, that’s like if you just gave me a quote by a geographer as a source for something related to computer science. The responsibility of finding a credible source for your number is still on you.
Those residential units will be worthless too if all the offices close. Why live in the big city and pay huge rents if you work remote? Just move to a cheap area and buy a nice house.
Those huge rents exist because demand exceeds supply (amongst other reasons). People want to live in walkable neighborhoods and not suburbs where you have to drive everywhere to survive.
I worked hybrid 18 at home, 22 at the office and it sucked.
It showed me three things:
• It showed me that I was far more productive when I was at home and I was comfortable and not distracted.
• It showed me that I was coming into the office for absolutely no logical reason (even while there, all discussion was via Slack and Zoom).
• It showed me that the company’s leadership was incompetent.
This wasn’t even a ‘we paid for the space, we have to use it’ issue. This was an office job at a light industrial facility where no one had to be in the office. If they didn’t have us come in, they could have knocked down the office area and put in another line or two. Just incompetence.
I treat office days as social days for exactly this reason. I know I’m not getting anything done, there are too many distractions, so I MUST be being forced to come into this disaster zone for one reason - to recharge. So that’s what I do.
The only way I got anything done in the office was to wear noise-canceling headphones all the time. At which point, why bother coming in? I couldn’t hear anyone anyway.
In other news…
“we lied and tried to force RTO because we wanted people to quit so we could avoid the bad-press of layoffs. They didn’t quit, we had to do layoffs to keep the stock price up because as a ceo I’m paid in shares. We’re done the layoffs for now and we enjoy skipping out on rent for office space.”
There are a lot of great ones in here, but there’s another perspective I think should be added. For a long time, employees have been commoditized. We’re resources. Interchangeable. And that gives companies tremendous power.
WFH puts us on more even footing. There are entire cities supported by a single industry or even company. Now we aren’t limited geographically in who we can work for. If you’re toxic to work for, we can leave. It saps the power of the leadership to say “my way or the highway.”
I don’t think this is the secret underlying reason. I agree it’s real estate values that are mainly driving it, but I think this is absolutely part of it. Toxic leaders (and every company has them) are finding people are less willing to tolerate their bullshit because they aren’t over a barrel to the same degree. Still need universal healthcare to really break their back.
defeated broke millennial more disaffected for not being able to get past article paywall :(
btw, this here is a very nice extension called web archives
ITT people with drastically different ideas of what hybrid is.
Why do I feel like the next phase of this is changing the expectations of hybrid to be more like “9 in the office, 1 day from home”
My wife works in a large suburban office park off a major highway. The company designs hardware so obviously they have people in the workshop on-site etc, but you could remove three of their office buildings and keep those people at home. She also flies out from the east coast to the west coast twice a year just to sit in a conference room for two days straight… it’s like no one has ever heard of Zoom.
I’ve been working from home for nearly a decade and a half now. It has enabled me to keep my job after moving halfway across the country. I have dinner ready when the wife and kids get home, the laundry done, and can go for a jog at the local park for a few laps when I want to and yet I still get shit done and do a great job.
It just absolutely baffles me that CEOs aren’t chomping at the bit to downsize their office space footprints, get off those leases or sell off their properties, and let everyone work from home.
I have dinner ready when the wife and kids get home, the laundry done, and can go for a jog at the local park for a few laps when I want to and yet I still get shit done and do a great job.
You are so much more not-lazy than I am. Going for a jog after work? I salute you.
If I don’t plan to do stuff after work then my weekends end up being a rush of errands and housekeeping.
Defeated? Wasn’t the aim full WFH?
Hybrid is a compromise that makes no sense to either party. The company still has to maintain an expensive office while being limited to the talent pool within commutable distance. The employee still has to waste countless (albeit fewer) hours travelling while being limited to job opportunities within ~20 miles of their residence.
Hybrid is always worse than either fully remote or fully in office. You end up with people coming into the office and sitting on Zoom or posting on Slack, and people at home missing out on conversations that don’t happen there. So you have to do twice as much work to keep everybody on the same page.
We have hybrid and it actually really works. We hire countrywide and if you don’t live near an office you are fully remote. But if you do live near an office you can go in anytime. I don’t like going to the office, but if I need to print or ship, or need to meet a client or coworker it’s nice to have the option. Also anytime I have an issue, I can pop in the office to check out new hardware, or work if my home is unsuitable due to whatever ( power outage, noisy maintenance, over 90 degrees since we don’t have AC, sick kid). However, I think hybrid only works if there is no minimum requirement on time in office. If it is at the teams discretion the home office becomes an amenity. We also downsized from something like 200 cubes to around sixty, so that helps too.
I think hybrid only works if there is no minimum requirement on time in office.
Then it’s not really hybrid, it’s actually fully WFH with the option to come in. Hybrid forces you to come in.
I would call that “remote first” to avoid ambiguity. My current employer is like that too, with offices or co-working spaces in select major cities around the world.
The key differentiating factor is that you can go into the office if you feel like it. It’s only “hybrid” in the sense that you decide, on a purely personal whim, whether you want to or not.
Personally, I live fairly close to a big office, but have only go in for big yearly meetings. And with a remote first culture no one bats an eye at that.
As someone who has WFH for the last 10 years, I do wish I could go into the office occasionally to have face to face meetings for large projects. Those are actually very useful for faster communication and effective for full understanding between groups in a way that video calls just can’t do. We are, after all, social animals and there is something about breathing the same air that can’t be beat.
I’ve worked from home for the past 10 years as well, and the face to face meetings don’t do anything for me, personally. With a job done entirely on a computer, I can’t think of anything that works better in person.
Can i ask what job/position you have? Im trying to learn more about people who dont see the need for in person meetings. Was wondering if it maybe had to do with their job or how they approach a problem
I’m a programmer.
Would you believe me if i said that it makes perfect sense in my head then? I’m a team lead/tech coach and senior dev. Ive seen people develop better at home because otherwise they get distracted by god knows what at the office and for them id tell them to wfh as much as they want, for al long as they need.
Personally, i have too much distractions at home to prevent me from developing and at the office i feel some mental force making me focus at work.
Both are a-ok though!As for things that work better in person : as a team lead i try to read body and room language during some meetings with my team ( most i dont, just a few ) and that is easier in person for me. But that shouldnt stop anyone unless its like, once in a blue moon. As soon as its not that rare, its hybrid with limitations and people like yourself are no longer as comfortable as they could be!
Hybrid does make sense. There are people who work better in an office ( like myself ) and there are people who are better working from home ( like my coworker ). The company i work for believes hybrid is the way to go so that you can supply an office for people like me, but also hire people who work remotely. However, nobody is saying you need to have an office that can house 100% of you employees. 60% is good enough as not everyone will be in the office at the same time. Money saved!
That said, some meetings are better to have in person so once in a while a required in person meeting is needed.
I believe in the words of my company : everyone, everywhere. And that includes an office or, which has happened, from working from spain, germany or thailand which are all remote locations in no way connected with the company. These were people who legit lived abroad or were looking after a vacation home of a friend
You mention 60% minimum, the second there’s a minimum then you can’t hire employees living far from an office or if you do you create two classes of employees.
Why should I RTO 60% of the time if they are ready to let others with the same job RTO 0% if the time? Just because I got unlucky and they happen to have an office less than X km away from where I live? How come I’m not allowed to move somewhere further away and get the same exemption then?
We call that discrimination and I’m not even getting into how it impacts women and POC more than white guys to have to RTO.
Re-read that post. They didn’t say 60% of the time they said office capacity should be 60% of the workforce at minimum.
You can make more coherent arguments arguing the actual words the other guy said.
Last time im going to comment at this, This will have no use to explain to you but hey, im going to try anyway.
No, the minimum is not set to force people to go the office. Its so people like myself, who work better in an office, to have a spot when needed. You are reading what you want, not what im saying.
Congratulations you just cut your available employee pool down to…local access again. Hybrid is pointless and a waste of space and resources for less.
No meetings require in person. Get a white board and a camera if you can’t do in person meetings. It’s 2024, not 1975.
No i didnt. You seem to have missed the spot where i said we hired and had people work remotely from completely different countries. I may have not mentioned the in person meetings are preferred in person, but can be done remotely was well by those that want to work remotely and not be in the office. However, some meetings have gravitas to them and are preferred in person. And im not talking about once a week or w/e. It all depends on the team workflow, type of job etc etc.
Ive worked on projects that were 100% remote that ended well, but was working on a project recently that was going so bad that a (preferred) in person meeting was requested because a full day of body language reading while discussions were ongoing, was required. If a person lived far away ( which wasnt the case here ) then that wouldve been totally fine ! They couldve attended the meeting remotely ! I planned the meeting as a teams meeting incase somebody wanted to work from home, and had planned a small meeting room for those that didnt.
I didnt shoot myself in the foot, im saying a hybrid workfloor is all about being flexible to anyone’s needs and every situation because nobody is the same and not everyone wants to be at the office 100%.
This is what i also believe. To quote the company’s slogan again : “everyone, everywhere”The issue with this is that most hybrid work plans end up being RTOs. They get used by the C levels to push for getting everyone back into the office. The majority of us work just fine remotely, the rest that can’t seem to get it, sure have an office, but it’ll eventually push to full remote. There’s to many positives for remote work that these companies are seeing now.
I can understand that frustration, and in those cases the c-suite is wrong and shouldnt push hybrid in an attempt to go back on wfh. Hell, those c-suite people should gtfo. I believe hybrid is the way but not for those reasons. I believe that because it benefits everyone and can get the best out of both, not because i want to kill wfh. Wfh is here to stay and should be encouraged if thats the way you work best!
For perspective, I was 100% WFH for about 10 years. A couple of years ago I got a new job (huge compensation boost, and massive perks boost).
Lucky for me, which was one of the reasons I looked into it, my work is a 15 minute bike from where I live, they offer free breakfast and lunch every day, and a gym. So there are plenty of personal incentives for me to go into the office.
But what I find so surprising is that virtually everyone in my office thinks that hybrid is the best for productivity. Literally every person I’ve talked to about this agrees (quietly, of course, they don’t want to lose it) that the spontaneous meetings, the overhearing what other people are talking about (and jumping in with your own knowledge), the ability to quickly turn around and chat with another person, makes collaboration, and by extension productivity, way higher.
My biggest thing is that, as a senior software dev, the junior devs come to me for help quite frequently. When we’re in the office, I would say the average is about 3 times a day. When one or both of us is WFH, it probably doesn’t even average to one. There is something about sending a message or an email or requesting a zoom meeting that seems to be enough of a hurdle to ask what is a simple question. So they end up spinning their wheels a lot longer.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I get that WFH is a huge benefit to the employee. Which is why I did it for so long, with two young kids it was a god send to be home all the time if they needed to come because they were sick or if I needed to run out to the doctors with them. And, of course, commuting just absolutely blows (I think that’s the biggest drawback of any non-FWFH schedule). So I do support it.
However, I think we need to be realistic about its benefits. Companies want people back in the office because, generally speaking, people are more productive.
You realize that you’re experiencing massive selection bias right?
A) it’s not very socially acceptable to talk about how much you’d rather be at home with your cat than here talking with this colleague.
B) everyone you work with chose a hybrid job.
i.e. “People who choose to work a hybrid job think hybrid is better”
Or in your case, “people who get to go into a big tech office with free meals and gyms and laundry think it’s better to go into the office”.
Try working a hybrid job where you commute 45min each way, and still have to cook yourself three meals a day and then come back and tell us whether you think hybrid is really more productive. I spent a year at a MAANG firm as a contractor and got to go to their head campus near SF and thought ‘damn, if this was what working was like, I could more easily see myself going into the office’, then I returned to my home city and went to their office their and saw the stale muffins that were breakfast and remembered the whole rest of my career and what companies are like and returned to the real world.
Yes, I understand the hurdle in asking people questions, but quite frankly that is addressable through numerous ways from zoom office hours, to better team rituals and culture, to slack bots, occasional meetups, or just plain old fashioned pair programming… all methods that cost far less and cause far less disruption to people’s lives then forcing in them into an office 3 days a week.
And you know what else is more productive for a company? Having everyone working 60 hour weeks in the office all the time. Who. the. fuck. cares. We live in a world with literal billionaires. Working more doesn’t make the world a better place it enriches assholes who never learned how to share or be happy with what they have.
Honestly the productivity argument isn’t hitting and probably never will. It’s just not easy to measure, especially in software where it makes sense to be remote in most cases.
Rather pro-wfh should argue about employee well being. Its horrible PR to go against employee well-being.
Which leads to the question, and its an honest question and I would benefit from the honest answer: If I can do the job hybrid, why can I not do the job remote? Is it because you needed me to move some paper boxes to the printer?
There are some aituations for some roles where meeting in person is necessary for trust and connections to be established. Being in person lets a lot of people feel a better connection with teammates, because humans are animals and that is just how it works.
This is nit true for every role, and is mostly for roles that have to work with people whose primary jobs are interpersonal or connection making like executives and leadership.
It does not really apply to roles where deliverables are already spelled out and information exchangenis formalized and you don’t need to convince someone to do something ad hoc. Plus some people do just fine doing all of those things remotely, but they have to work with people who don’t.
for trust and connections to be established.
What is more trusting than a recorded Zoom meeting.
Oh, you mean you need me off the record to be made complicit in malfeasance.
Pass.
No, a lot of people just feel more trust from being in the same room with someone and getting a better feeling from being in proximity with the person. It has nothig to do with on and off the record. Do you really record all of your zoom calls to CYA?
Think of it like attending a concert in person compared to listening to an album, it is just a different experience in person. Not everyone gets that out of in person interactions, but a lot of people do.
It has nothig to do with on and off the record
It is exactly what it is though… you don’t see that?
As someone who works hybrid and frequently has both in person and online meetings that are rarely if ever recorded, no I don’t see that as the default expectation.
I can see that it could be, if the people I was interacting with were evil and untrustworthy, but that wouldn’t be a job I would stick with for any length of time. What I have seen is that quite a few people just work better with others if they meet in person occasionally.
There is a reason that a lot of knowledge work has conferences to share knowledge in person.
Idk man…
Introverts thrive in non-social settings. Introverts tend to be good at technology.
Extroverts thrive in arenas, where they can set odds and smash opponents into submission.
It all sounds like a stern conviction of supporting the bullies, and preventing work from being done.
In my 20 years of working in the office and an additional 4 working 100% WFH, I’ll throw my worthless internet opinion out there as to why: It comes down to the culture of the company.
Some companies see a real benefit from water tank conversations, face-to-face meetings, and the ability for managers to ask someone in person on a moment’s notice to do things. There is also a lack of trust in the employees being able to perform correctly without physical oversight in many companies. Granted and aside from the trust issue, there is some truth to that, but can in fact be realigned with the exact same benefit by retooling communications. It’s up to each company however to formulate the best course of action to remedy that and many sadly fail, resulting in RTO mandates.
Some companies see a real benefit from water tank conversations
There are real benefits to water cooler spontaneous talk. However, they don’t overcome the detriments to having all your staff commute all the time on the off chance one will occur to produce a positive result.
face-to-face meetings, and the ability for managers to ask someone in person on a moment’s notice to do things.
These are largely dead in hybrid scenarios, because those that would be meeting face to face don’t work in the office on the same day. So the practical result to hybrid is the worker loses productivity from the commute to come into the office for one or two days an sits at a desk alone all day in video meetings with their coworkers just like they’d do at home. The next day their coworker does the same while the original worker is WFH that day.
Coaching newbies doesn’t work that well remotely, so you’ll have to be at the office more for them to ask you questions, otherwise they’re stuck in the simplest things for days.
This is evidence that you need to adjust your training methods.
Any evidence to back that up?
That’s the line my CEO used, but we had plenty of hires join during COVID that have excelled while here, with lots of talented engineers that had to leave because they were forced to an office hundreds of miles away.
Our company is doing the opposite and forcing everyone to RTW 5-days a week. Can’t wait for the exodus and the “I told you so”
There’s always a push, we just need to push back harder.
It seems like they pushed and there was nothing there to push because everyone had left. This is a case where the worker had options and it’s nice to see them use that to their advantage and encourage changes.
Hybrid isn’t good enough
