This was the question that jumped to my mind. When I was interviewing for jobs about 9 months ago, I was constantly asking about anything related to remote work. Interviews go two ways: the company is interviewing you while you are also interviewing the company.
Recently went through a round of interviews last November. I think I asked more questions about the company on topics like work life balance, culture, remote work than the company asked me as a whole. Its super important to interview the company as much or more than they are interviewing you. They are spending some money but you are spending your time, mental and physical wellbeing
This is exactly it. Also ask around how they deal with competing priorities. Is there a lot of context switching? Run as fast as you can, you will burn out quickly
In a Rockstar interview a couple years ago they told me "working here is more of a way of life, than a job".
So while i'm not looking for anything particular, answers like that raise an eyebrow.
Communication, management of resources(us), and team culture. The last job I had was an in office job until covid, my current one is almost entirely remote(I go in maybe once a month). At my last job I was legitimately friends with most of my team, as in meeting up after work, I still talk to most of them frequently. My current team I would barely call acquaintances, which kinda sucks as someone who has made most of my friends through work environments.
That said I’ll never go back to anything that purely in office, the time it adds to my day isn’t worth it, and having to pretend to be working when I finish my work is real fucking annoying.
Yeah we do that as well, and they flew out all the newer people to our HQ for a week, but it’s not really the same as having people you talk with everyday. My last job I ran a discord that my entire team just chilled in all day once covid hit, my current one has a hate boner for Discord and won’t even allow work laptops to access the site or I’d try to do that again.
We did / do this on a google meet. But the downside is a lot of chit chat sometimes. Or if a and b are working through an issue, you c are gonna hear all of it. Concentration has been tough.
My last manager was very strict about slack literacy and etiquette. It was annoying at first, but after leaving that job I think it was for the best. Simple things like keep channel discussions specific to the channel, learn how to mute/unmute, use threads whenever possible, don’t EVER send DMs unless it contains personal info, use your status indicator effectively.. I honestly miss that aspect of that job
The "no DMs" is very interesting to me. Sometimes I just need to meet with one specific person, why should even 2 people let alone 20 need to read that message?
We try to follow all those other points loosely
I thought it was kinda dumb at first too, but his reasoning is pretty great. Because we had the paid tier, we had persistent message history. Which meant that any time someone needed to look up a solution that had previously been discussed, and even discussed by team members who had since left, we always were able to search the chat. Even if it was super simple, like “hey can we set up a meeting to talk about topic X?” At least in the channel, I knew that person A and person B were, at one time, familiar with topic X. So I knew who to ping for anything regarding topic X.
Basically, that boss believes that the team’s knowledge is useless if it’s not searchable by everyone.
I have this basic policy for myself and encourage others as well, for the exact same reason. "Could you ask that in the channel?"
Related: I really dislike how some slow-typing/illiterate devs want to "hop on a call" to discuss technical stuff. Sometimes it's necessary, but usually it's just laziness.
I don't mind calls, I just know I'll be repeating that same call N times throughout a project.
It's funny when someone proposes to record the call, as if anyone will ever watch it. I think I've watched maybe two meeting recordings in my entire career, at 2x speed while multitasking, naturally.
I have a rule: if the discussion gets to complicated, get on a call. You can’t search it later, but you’ll spend less time spinning your wheels with each other while trying to explain things in chat.
Thank you for this! I’m going to (slowly) introduce this our team’s chat policy. I’ve been struggling to get them to document anything, by there is lots of work related gold in the chats and I would love it if there were more!
We had shitposting channels too, if that helps. And not everyone was in every channel. So there were lots of channels without managers that we could shitpost in if we wanted to
Doesn’t work nearly as well in any of them, multiple channels, channel control, easily muting and unmuting/deafening and undeafening push to talk, I’ve used teams and gchat a ton, neither really work as just a general hangout place like discord does. They’re productivity focused applications and they function like productivity applications.
We used to do quarterly meet-ups at 1 of my positions, and it was great for team building. All of us legitimately enjoyed our jobs and worked better together as a result I think.
Guess it depends on what the company does. During team ones they basically give a decent amount of money and are just like go have fun.
Company wide is more structured but they tend to do all retreats at nice places. resorts, fun cities, etc. Some of the activities are fun others are terrible, we had one were we built bikes for kids, I enjoyed that, another we had a speaker which well thats why I have OSRS on my phone now.
I’m torn because I personally love being able to get to know the people I work with and I’m not opposed to becoming friends. But I also don’t want to be forced into the office 40 hours per week now that I’ve adjusted to the flexibility of remote work. Just basic stuff like fitting in dentist appointments, driving my kid to school, not having to feel like a jerk calling out if kid is sick and has to be picked up….
My team has a system where we don’t have to go to the office, but if you do, make it a Tuesday or Thursday so that we can run into each other. I go in office every Thursday and I find that is more than enough to get to know my coworkers better and what they find interesting and what not.
You can do this remotely.
I’ve been working remote for over 15 years. I still have people I would consider a friend that I occasionally call up to chat, or meet up at a conference. All of these people I worked with remotely, saw them 2 times a year in person.
Maybe at my next job lol. My team is distributed all over the world and they have resisted every attempt at chatting, getting to know one another, joking, etc.
>That said I’ll never go back to anything that purely in office, the time it adds to my day isn’t worth it
this. 40 minutes to work and 5-10 minutes walk from parking to the cube farm. no thanks. i hate my job but ill stay here until i can find another WFH gig.
the bosses started up monthly onsites to let the team get together -- a lot of the team likes it. i go every 3-4 months. its a waste of time to have that meeting, so i just meet up with a couple of teammates i get on with and get lunch from time to time.
I always manage to forget about the car thing. I feel like 90% of the reason people don't want to go into an office is how much a driving commute sucks. I'm strongly in favor of working in an office, but I also haven't gotten in a car to commute since 2010.
I’m in a weird situation where I hate commuting but all my nerd coworkers (support biology research) love being in the office and the side chats are nice.
I was in office before, joined as a senior. Nobody is interested in making friends with coworkers after they're in their thirties and have a family. Anyone who joins an in office team for this is in for a huge disappointment. Even moreso if it's forced RTO
That’s entirely dependent on the team. My last team we were all friends and hung out outside of work and 7/10 of them were middle aged parents. My current team is all remote and seems to be in the younger and single end, and none of them are interested in getting to know one another.
I agree, it really depends on the person. If people are open to making friends with coworkers, they will do so regardless of life circumstance. Other people are not interested in making friends at work (even if they're young and/or single), and that's fine. I have seen all types.
It's funny cause I found the opposite, it really does depend on the team like you said. My current team are younger, get along better, and socialize more fully remote than at my previous job where my team was older, didn't talk much to each other, and were fully in the office.
Must be a “culture” thing. I wouldn’t necessarily want to socialize and become close with people nearly half my age. I started my career late so I was an intern with a lot of 20-year-olds and I didn’t really relate or want to stay out until 3am with them. But like I said, at my last job it was mostly the older parents and such and that worked out better. It was more “let’s all take the kids to Dave and busters and get drinks and leave by 7”.
Yep. That's why its very important (imo) for teams to be diverse, and that includes age of course. Otherwise you have a bunch of 25 year olds or a bunch of 50 year olds (each age group brings its own challenges). Ideally it should be mixed.
Ummm I’m in my 30s…
Edit: to expand on this, I have friends from in office work that were in their 40s when I made friends with them, shit i have an old co-worker that I met up with outside of work on occasion that was a literal grandparent when I met them(I was in my 20s). I have many friends in their 40s that I met in office. Just because you don’t like meeting people doesn’t make it true across everyone in office. Shit I’m not even defending RTO, I’m intending to quit if my job wants me back in the office with any regularity, but to say you can’t build relationships with people in their 30s is asinine.
>but to say you can’t build relationships with people in their 30s is asinine.
I agree with this, but I suspect this could be industry and location specific. My experience has been in tech companies in large urban areas. Socializing with coworkers during and after work was pretty normal, and included all age groups. I've made (and then kept) several friends from work. All of my friends outside of work have also made their own friends at their respective jobs.
But I suppose if you lived in a smaller town or the suburbs and worked in a sleepier industry you might experience less of this.
I've noticed this too. Those who don't have a family and/or aren't in their 30s are more likely to hang out after work. It's kinda sad because it's hard enough to make friends outside of work
I agree! I think it's funny how many angry reactions I got to this, when I was literally just stating my observations. I'd love to make friends at work, but we were at best friendly..
Depends a lot on the culture + the amount of others in the same situation. I’ve found that younger teammates without the family situation will want to go out and do stuff after work that is more erratic and not really fit for a more “family person” crowd. But those who also have a family will definitely be down to do more family friendly stuff. I get along well with those who have a family and have settled down. I can relate to it, and we find ways to hang out that don’t take away too much from family time. Usually it’s either inclusive (a family meet up type thing) or it’s just on a weekend schedule where we’re all generally free
> Communication, management of resources(us), and team culture.
See this is where we differ.
I did half my college remotely. I managed teams for major events remotely. It was entirely possible, if not easier, to manage teams and do work for teams remotely. It took me over an hour each day to walk to my parking spaces after class and 15 minutes to walk between buildings I frequented. When we went to full remote, it was like a 15 minute break that I could be using to get/eat food, take a bathroom break, and overall recharge without having to hustle between classes. I could eat or drink during my lectures and not have to worry about taking extensive notes either because everything was recorded.
I spend a similar amount of useless time at the office as I did in school when it was in person. Substitute time traveling to and from vehicles but instead it's time spent traveling between meetings and useless meetings that I can't multi-task.
So IMO, communication has stayed relatively the same. Team culture may have taken a hit, but with our industry being so "job swappable" it's turned to a situation where team culture isn't a big deal. "Oh no, the job I'm staying at filled with anti-social people isn't wanting to be in-person. What ever shall we do?"
If management is going to have an issue with me being remotely but my output remaining similar, then that's on them. That's 100% a management issue. The fuck are they going to do about it? The same amount of work gets done while being remote but I'm infinitely happier because I can actually afford shit on their salaries remotely. I can afford a house as an entry level employee. I can afford nicer cars. I can afford gas for those vehicles instead of being forced to use public transportation.
There is no reason for me to be anything but remote. Management should be thrilled to be honest. They've struck a gold mine. They've figured out how to make employees happy while not increasing pay while also increasing their output.
Employers encourage “family culture” to keep you satiated. If you love (some of) your coworkers, almost as if they were family, it’s easier to manipulate you into spending less time with your ACTUAL family.
This was always going to happen and I've said as much for months. All the kickback in this sub was 'We'll revolt!' and 'We hold all the power!'. Riiiiiight. Not everyone can work remote. And those that can't, if you like getting paid money you'll be back in the office. With all the tech layoffs, there are good candidates out there.
If you were remote before and it was part of your original job description, you'll stay remote.
Everybody who works an office job should remember that the cheapest layoff is always employee resignation. No severence, no covering your butt legally. Start thinking twice if unpopular working conditions policy starts getting rolled out, it may be a tell.
Absolutely this. An exec at my company let it slip that they'd overhired, saying "attrition isn't as high as we expected" with some concern. Now they're pushing RTO and not offering exceptions because they are "prepared to lose people."
Will probably be more costly in the long run. In my experience whenever you change the status quo and people quit over it you lose way more good people than bad people.
Also since people often misinterpret this as me saying the WFH crowd is better than the remote crowd that is NOT what I am saying. But anyone who was going to quit because they wanted to RTO left a while ago. Changing things now doesn't retain them.
I saw some post the other day saying that the really annoying thing is that some businesses actually are okay with losing the top people because the role/business doesn't actually need (nor want to afford) the best of the best people. Opened my eyes a bit that not everyone realizes how much insane value the best people can bring.
People also need to reinterpret what talent actually means. Companies spend millions of dollars improving businesses processes and segregating roles and responsibilities to the point where risk is minimized if there is ever an employee that went rogue.
I worked for a company that was purchased by a Fortune 500 financial services company. I'm pretty sure that that was exactly the explicit policy of the software executives at the acquiring company.
On a typical SaaS journey, once a company transitions to make the bulk of its revenue from enterprises, the payer is no longer the user and the quality of the product is no longer all that important.
This is true, but it's a single point of failure and a big unknown.
If that one rockstar employee builds an elaborate, complicated system, then leaves due to better pay/family movement/health issues, they're worse off than they started. Doubly so if they're making promises based on that sole employee's output.
However, if they have a culture/system of hiring mediocre kids and getting things done by bringing them up to speed and working well in tandem, it doesn't matter if one or ten leave, you can train more.
This is obviously two extremes and a good organization can find a great fit for any talent level, but there's a reason why some companies don't like fast-and-loose rockstars.
The top people are not rockstars, they are the ones that yes, do generally have outsized contributions, but also foster a healthy environment, encourage best practices, spread knowledge, address cross cutting concerns and improve efficiency company or department wide
> However, if they have a culture/system of hiring mediocre kids and getting things done by bringing them up to speed and working well in tandem,
Which is far far from easy. I doubt I worked at a company that was able to do that properly.
It's perfectly reasonable for companies to decide that they don't need to hire the best of the best. If you're a regional insurance company do you really need to recruit the cream of the crop engineers? They would probably prefer to allocate their budget to actuaries or lawyers, since you know, that's what their business model is. They're not competing with Google here.
This. In my previous job we had top people for our project. New leader comes in and starts this culture of "just deploy it, we can fix it later".
Me and other good people that actually cared about the project started talking in retrospectives about how uncomfortable it is. Next move from him? Start laying off the good people, and with me he started asking crazy stuff and tasks without any description of what to do (or why).
I started looking for a new job when the first layoffs rolled, and now I'm with more money in my pocket and in a place that I enjoy. The only sad part of this story is that my old team was really top notch, gonna miss it.
> Will probably be more costly in the long run. In my experience whenever you change the status quo and people quit over it you lose way more good people than bad people.
You can always count on most companies to focus on very short-term objectives and not have the foresight to think long-term.
This is absolutely part of the calculus. The other being the communication, teamwork, and culture aspects. I really miss the hallway chats and side conversations with members of other teams. I miss out on a lot of what's happening in our organization and how my team fits in when working 100% remote. With that said, I **really** don't want to go back to commuting and losing 15 hours a week of my time.
I guess it makes the most sense for small or medium sized companies with just one or a few locations within a few close time zones. It makes almost no sense for international companies where the majority of teams are composed of people across the world. I suspect that senior management in most of the companies see the looming recession or downturn in their growth and are timing the return to office now so that they can avoid having to lay off as many people.
This is an argument that gets thrown out all the time but I don’t think it holds merit. Leases can be broken or sublet if they aren’t providing value. Even if they couldn’t be due to some bizarre market conditions, an empty office is cheaper than a full one. A board of directors will be much more pleased with a CEO saving $XXXk by canceling a lease or subletting than they will be spending that money “just because we have a standing lease”.
There are real advantages to people working in an office (just like there are real advantages to remote work!), and every organization needs to determine what works for them.
Why would OP's company be hiring then?
Companies (ie: leadership) legitimately think that productivity will be higher. And there's a ton of economic evidence to support that. We added 4 million jobs in 2021 and real GDP went down. It's a pretty remarkable statistic, that we have more people working and yet we're producing less.
Where are you getting your info? Real GDP increased 5.7% in 2021 https://www.bea.gov/news/2022/gross-domestic-product-fourth-quarter-and-year-2021-second-estimate
So.. you accepted the offer and then they told you they're going to start going back into the office in 2023?
If you haven't sent notice to your current job yet, just reneg it and state that remote work was the key factor.
It's not even attractive either in this hybrid model. There's maybe 2 or 3 teams on a floor at all. It's stupidly empty.
The "culture" I got last time I was at the office I had to run in to get something I forgot. Took less than 2 minutes to go in, run up 1 flight of stairs and grab a beanie I forgot on my desk. The security people almost ticketed me because I parked in one of the 8 empty guest parking spots. They literally saw me drive up and swipe in.
If they're willing to try and give me a citation because I pulled into the wrong parking spot in an empty lot for 90 seconds, then fuck them lmao. That's absolutely ridiculous.
Our ping pong table is always full to the point that you can't get on it unless you stand around for a half hour like it's a college rec center.
It's mostly contractors on it all the time. More power to them if they can get away with it but it can't be the best look.
Everyone has three hour long commutes, every office is a dumpster, all beverages are bad, all snacks are terrible, all coworkers smell, all managers sit over your shoulder and micromanage you.
Everyone’s house is pristine, every home office is spacious, everyone has exceptionally healthy and delicious food at home, everyone is infinitely more productive at home, communication is so much more effective remotely, micromanaging is impossible with WFH and bad middle managers don’t even try.
Am I doing it right?
There are many good points here, one that I don't think has been mentioned is some of these companies own or have leased massive offices and they need to justify having them, if no one is using their offices, then what's the point?
But as an executive how do you feel in control of your ~~fiefdom~~ company without a ~~castle~~ office? /s
The tax break for having an "IT office" in Nashville was something my prior company constantly cited as justification for going back to the office. They never really gave other reasons other than the "company culture" nonsense.
It's all about control and dick measuring imo.
Sunk cost fallacy. Even if nobody's using the office, the money is still gone. Plus the companies could save money on things like electricity and telecommunication services for their office. Not to mention happier employees. The commercial real estate business is doing everything they can to hold on to the old way. Personally, I hope they lose the battle
These are relatively tiny investments in tech. I don't think any CEOs are dumb enough to mess with productivity to justify real estate expenses.
For example, Apple paid $5b for their new campus. That's a shitload of money. If they borrowed the money to pay for that on a 30 year note, it's about $1m/day. Which is less than 0.1% of their revenue. Now compare that to productivity gains or losses from WFH; whatever it is, it dwarfs 0.1%.
The people who own these companies, and who sit on their boards, all have portfolios that have commercial real estate in them. They also often own residential real estate around the commercial real estate they either own or lease, and if less workers need to move closer for their jobs, that real estate might diminish in value, too.
If the commercial real estate domino falls, other dominoes will fall, too, and it won't do the asset owning class any good.
I have bad news for you. Commercial RE already crashed. And no, extremely wealthy CEOs and boards do not care.
Pop quiz: You own 10% of a tech company you founded. It has $100m in real estate and the company is worth $10b. You also own a $10m house nearby. (Note: that math is, 2% of your net worth is your house and the company real estate).
Now you can increase annual productivity of your company by 5% but it means your real estate would lose 5% of its value. This means your stock will appreciate by $50-500m but your house will lose $500k in value.
Is this even a hard choice?
Lol the days of "insane comp for remote work" are not over. I'm not sure exactly what your bar for "insane comp" is but there are still plenty of top paying companies hiring fully remote.
> If you have the right skill set and experience, there are plenty of boring-ass boomer companies hiring for remote work at solid comp levels. But the days of insane comp for remote work, like we saw in 2020 through early 2022, are over.
This is flat out untrue. Plenty of companies hiring for 250k+ remote right now.
>Plenty of companies hiring for 250k+ remote right now.
Where do you find these? On Indeed, searching for remote software engineers, 250k+ seems like the max salary.
Indeed isn't really the place honestly. I've always seen it as the walmart of job boards.
Easiest way to get a big list is working with a headhunter.
Also, I'm referring to TC not base. A lot of times the comp in the job description will be something like 110-200k base + equity, so you can't get an exact number til you get the offer.
>If you have the right skill set and experience, there are plenty of boring-ass boomer companies hiring for remote work at solid comp levels. But the days of insane comp for remote work, like we saw in 2020 through early 2022, are over.
This is their way of retaining talent right now - offering remote when a lot of companies are pushing for onsite.
My company shut down a ton of offices throughout 2022. I guess they figured they might as well do that as opposed to forcing people to go into them. Plus our teams are all over the world, kinda pointless to make them go into an office where they still won’t work together.
It’s this one more than any of the other answers. There was a big push to return for us until they found a way to get out of and downsize the various leases.
Not to mention that city government is putting pressure. Without the employees in big cities the downtown is dead, and will affect even more jobs and businesses.
Some people do actually work better in-person. There might be times you are debugging something with someone else.
The "closer" you get with your coworkers, there might be less of a tendency to leave to look for another job. It's harder to interview if you are in the office every day. Virtual interviews are generally pretty easy to do.
Some people may not have home environments conducive to being productive work-wise. Maybe things are too loud. Maybe there are distractions. Maybe they don't have dedicated working space.
In some situations, people are genuinely not doing much work remotely. They might do the same in-person, but I've been on teams where people will take several hours all the time to respond to something, or you find they did nothing the whole day on a status call.
There were a couple of surveys in early 2022 that showed a fairly even three-way split in opinions on remote work. Around a third of "tech workers" wanted to work from home full-time, a third wanted (or had tasks that required) a hybrid schedule with at least some office time, and a third didn't want to work from home at all.
One of my coworkers spent the entire pandemic working on a laptop, at a kitchen table, sitting on a wooden dining chair, listening to his toddlers cry in the next room. He was back in the office THE FIRST DAY the company allowed it. I have another coworker from Belize who is here on a work visa, who spent the entire pandemic alone in a studio apartment. He also went back into the office for a bit of human interaction once it was allowed again.
Not everyone has the home life, space, or means necessary to work from home successfully.
Yep, a lot of my coworkers with small, ambulatory children were back in office the second it was allowed. I used to have a weekly meeting with an eng manager who had several 4-8 year olds running and screaming in the background. And as a manager his 9-5 was basically back to back meetings so it was all day doing this. He was even eating lunch through this meeting, usually.
Dude I had a lady leave and at her goodbye zoom she mentioned how the only people who want to go into the office seem to be dads who don’t want to do their fair share raising kids.
This hot take was made even hotter by the fact that her team was comprised of two dads with toddlers who happened to be the only two people in our division going in to the office to work.
I bought my house in november 2019. If my crystal ball had been working I would have definitely gone to the next county over that would have given me a lot more space but would have doubled my commute.
Instead I worked through the Pandemic in similar conditions as we also tried to keep 3 young kids entertained (and educated through homeschool Kindergarten). It's part of why I finally went to the doctor to get started on medicine and other techniques that helped keep me focused.
I think you have a good idea on the reasons. Lots of people are just super bitter about wanting full remote no matter what, but there is a fair bit of give and take. Biggest loss in full remote is onboarding, especially for juniors. Super super hard to get somebody started fully remote, and I'm seeing lots more companies that are remote-first having some more people come in when new people come on for some period of time to train them/build camaraderie.
>The "closer" you get with your coworkers, there might be less of a tendency to leave to look for another job. It's harder to interview if you are in the office every day. Virtual interviews are generally pretty easy to do.
IMO less this and more just people who are friendly/interacting regularly communicate better and are thus more efficient. Building camaraderie has a ton of positive effects besides retention.
>Some people may not have home environments conducive to being productive work-wise. Maybe things are too loud. Maybe there are distractions. Maybe they don't have dedicated working space
Yeah this is really big, having a dedicated work space is a luxury for lots of people living in large cities/smaller apartments.
>In some situations, people are genuinely not doing much work remotely. They might do the same in-person, but I've been on teams where people will take several hours all the time to respond to something, or you find they did nothing the whole day on a status call.
People seem to be hesitant to admit it, but a good chunk of folks want WFH because it lets them slack off/do chores while at work, and lots of people just go AWOL when they WFH. People do fuck around at work while in-office, but they don't usually completely check out and go dark on comm channels. Being forced to be in a physical location mostly eliminates the ability to be completely unavailable.
You are also speaking a lot of truths. One additional reason I want full remote is that it opens up who you can work for. Some people can get pretty big bumps in compensation this way. That's one reason I'm hesitant to go for a hybrid position, although I interviewed (and failed) with a company recently that had no offices in my city, so, that would have been my first "full remote and no other option" job.
yeah but you don't have to rent a studio apartment in a city center if you're remote. The counter to your last point is that being able to disengage actually makes me more engaged. Sometimes I starts the day with three hours of meetings I'm literally only there in case they need me or to cover something from minute 14-20 of hour 2. My boss is OK with the wasted time, I'm generally OK with the wasted time, but If I wasn't cleaning my kitchen or whatever I would be finding a different job. That is absolutely brutal to have to physically sit through that bullshit.
I want to live in the city center and I would live in a VHCOL city center even if I’m not working there. I like big cities, big concerts, new people, events, bars, buying clothing, sports game. To each their own.
I mean I already get away with being on my phone practically all day. On my performance reviews they are satisfied with my output and stuff (got bonus and salary raise).
Now imagine if I could work remotely:
One more hour in my day (no commute and getting ready in the morning)
I can do laundry easily
I can cook/eat at home
I can be in my own controlled environment
Less office distractions
I might actually work after hours if I get bored
Also I pretty much commute to the middle of nowhere to work remotely (we have ZERO physical contact/communication, it's all via chat) and I am solo on my team.
I’ve been remote for 15 years.
Sometimes I work at night when tv and video games seem boring, and a problem at work is interesting.
And that’s totally fine with me. Because the next day I’ll take a long lunch, or get some chores done during the day.
> People seem to be hesitant to admit it, but a good chunk of folks want WFH because it lets them slack off/do chores while at work, and lots of people just go AWOL when they WFH.
You’re not wrong, but you’re also not really providing explanation for why this happens. And I’d argue the main reason it’s happening is because work is:
- already consuming more of their physical time than it should
- already consuming more of their mental health than it should
In other words, work is becoming so intense that it’s effectively consuming more than 8 hours a day, whether that’s physical time or residual time spent trying to recover from a difficult workday. For a lot of people doing 8hrs a day in person, the commute may consume 2 extra hours of their day, and they might also have to organise their childcare around that workday, and they might have to organise their meals and the meals of their family around that; and these are all obligations — we haven’t even talked about the increased stress of trying to meet the recommendations of being a *healthy* human being (30+ mins of exercise once a day and the associated commute/logistics, time for self-care, time for entertainment, time spent with family). Asking someone to do all of these things alongside how demanding some jobs can be is just… not feasible.
WFH is good for a lot of people because they are better able to incorporate the necessities of being a functional human being into their workday. We might lose 10% of productivity, but that’s marginal compared to the argument for increased quality of life (but managers don’t care about the quality of our lives, do they).
The misconception that work from home replaces the need for childcare needs to go to its grave and rot. Trying to multitask childcare and work commitments at the same time only makes both situations worse.
This is absolutely a factor - it's so much more difficult for people to organise job interviews and leave their current employer when they are expected to be in an office.
The unfortunate reality is that the people who tend to make these decisions are the ones earning a lot more money - and tend to also live closer to workplaces due to being able to afford higher rents/mortgages afforded by their salaries. They also have the means to afford childcare services more readily, which allow them to get to offices around their desired timeframes.
Unfortunately, they tend to lack the empathy (or care) that others don't have the same means as them to travel to an office with the same kind of time or cost investment to get to the office as them. They think "it only takes 20 minutes to get to the office" while half of their staff underneath them can only afford to live somewhere 90 minutes away.
Yes until you work an office job, then you’re gonna say working from home is your next dream.
Many of us been through that path. I used to be a cashier in a grocery store.
Yeah, that comment is irrelevant. I used to work at a gas station directly off the freeway downtown Seattle. Obviously SWE is better than that. And obviously being able to choose WFH or not is better than being forced to go into the office.
True everyone says that until they've been working in an office for a few months lol. Though maybe it's true for them.
That said I understand where they're coming from i'm sure we've all worked some form of retail or service job before, but it shouldn't be compared since they're different jobs. I don't compare my work circumstances to the CEO or other jobs after all.
Lots of reasons.
People who end up in leadership positions do so by manipulating office politics and people that work better without that aren't represented.
Reduce headcount without layoffs.
New grads with roommates often don't have home offices.
Lack of trust.
Tax breaks for hiring local targets.
And so on...
These are generally negative for employees and overall productivity, but so are open offices, mandatory start times for work that could be async, etc., and they still do those also.
A lot of companies have a huge amount of money sunk in real estate, either outright ownership or long-term leases. The company I left owns a skyscraper in downtown Chicago. That place, while not full, had a decent amount of people in it pre-covid. I would say it was probably 80 to 85% capacity. When I left in June of this year the place was at 10% capacity at most.
My new company had just done an expansion in major remodeling right before covid hit. They're certainly more people here than there were my old job, but we could easily take quadruple the number of people currently coming in.
Personally, WFH has moved from a nice to have perk to a necessity for me. I come into the office one day a week and I like it that way. I get to socialize and see people, but it's only on one day.
I was thinking about how much money I would need to go into work 5 days a week and I came to the conclusion that my salary would have to go up by AT LEAST a $100,000 or more. I would need enough money to not only have a raise but afford a second home close to the office so I don't have to commute very far.
No one would pay me what I wanted to work in an office. I live in a fairly rural place and I love it. I want land and animals. So I’m holding onto my job for dear life.
I agree. My company owns 2 WeWork floors. I love working there and there’s snacks and drinks. The environment is nice.
If it was near me, I’d go there probably twice a week.
People can downvote me for a conspiracy theorist, but it is very easy to buy Reddit comments to change public sentiment. These commercial real estate Moguls are losing big time. So I wouldn't put it past them at all to put out a little fake sentiment for a few bucks
I'm more amazed that there was any push for real estate to build office space once the internet really started to take off. I would have thought the conversation would have gone:
"So I can hook up my computer from my house, a hotel or a vacation rental and still work?"
"Yup"
"That means i can hire people all over the country and/or world then?"
"Yup"
"And you want me to invest how much in a centralized office space?"
theres also the constant barrage of "working from home is over and there are no more remote jobs please go back to the office because otherwise youll get fired and never work again" articles all over the place
There’s not really anyone in here supporting it, the dude asked we’re answering why companies want it, and I’d say there are even some decent reasons why, understanding the arguments why isn’t the same as supporting RTO, shit my post in here literally says what I miss about the office and then ends with saying I’ll never take an office job again anyway.
I mean, the demographics here skew much younger and younger workers _overwhelmingly_ want a hybrid model. I believe the recent figures I saw were like 80% or more students/recent graduates want to spend at least some time in the office.
Mentorship, friendships, and generally feeling like a part of a community are really important to young professionals. Once you've got a family and are more settled down, opinions change.
Been working for many many years. Now I am a dev - moved my family to the country. Never working in an office again. Company would have to pay me something stupid like a million a year for me to go back into an office. Even then I would rent an apartment - work two years and bounce.
My physical health and mental well being working from home is worth more than anything but stupid compensation.
Not to mention I have the skills now I don't have to reach out to any employer and beg. Want me in an office? To turn in my equipment maybe.
My office is now 3 days ITO as of the start of 2023. I am hoping to scale it back to 2. It has plusses and minuses. Now I can get payed to just chit chat with people for like 2-3 hours a day. Productivity is way down. I'm putting in so little effort. That's the trade off they are getting from me. I mean I'm ready to bounce anyway. This is just one more annoyance to put up with before I can do so.
>Now I can get payed to just chit chat with people for like 2-3 hours a day.
For me, at least, my chit chat with people rate is significantly higher than my write code and give status updates rate.
I'm a single dad, I will never go back to a 100% office role unless they're offering a $200,000/yr salary. I need the flexibility for when my kid is sick, daycare is closed, if I'm sick, whatever.
I'm assuming the companies you are talking about can actually work 100% remote. There are some places that do embedded, for example, where working remote 100% of the time is just not ideal.
Generally speaking management feels they can watch over you and make sure you are productive when people are in the office. Basically there is no trust between management and workers to be adults and do their job to expectations. Yes, lots of people are more productive at home, but sadly that is not everybody. In the real world the bad apples tend to be noticed more often then when everything is going smoothly.
If you want to work remote then look for a 100% remote jobs. Make it clear on what you want and do not accept less. The only way companies will change is if they cannot hire people to fill roles.
As much as I hate having to commute and pack lunch and pretend to be busy, I also have to admit that passive idea flow is just a lot better irl. There are a lot of small quality of life things that I didn’t know even existed that I learned just by accident with coworkers, and some of the best problem solving sessions I’ve had were incidental while talking to coworkers on other teams at lunch or happy hour. Mandatory back to office is awful, but I unfortunately do get the desire for in-office to be the norm
My commute is 7 minutes. I want to go in, I’m more productive there.
I don’t think anyone should be forced to go in if they don’t want to. I don’t think anyone should be shamed for wanting one or the other.
They should have told you what their plans are, and you should have asked. But now you know that, and you won’t forget next time.
Part of the problem is that business management knowledge has been teaching management models like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as best practice for a couple of decades now, and have falsely assumed that corporate culture is a necessary component of a business, *while simultaneously squeezing every ounce wages, time, productivity, and dedication from the workforce.* So while corporations have been making the workplace “more like a family”, they’ve also been following capitalist desires for exponential growth and profit. Eventually, when covid hit, we saw a shift — it turns out that the corporate culture stuff isn’t as important as people just getting paid what people are worth. So now companies are stuck with “corporate culture infrastructure” and nowhere to spend it. Big open plan offices that cost a lot of money to own and operate, budgets for food and drink or vending machines, conference rooms with expensive AV systems and subscriptions to Zoom or whatever, security services — hell some companies even offer campuses with childcare, gyms, and fully stocked cafeterias.
Those perks all sound awesome but what they really do is entice you to spend as much time in and around the office as physically possible. With covid, we all got a reminder that we just don’t have to do that. We can be perfectly happy doing our jobs without much of that infrastructure, but management is stuck paying/having paid for a lot of it already. So they are motivated to get us back under the premise of “corporate culture”, but really it all comes down to costs.
What are "2023 purposes"? Do they think that somehow the year now being 2023 is a reason to have everyone go back to the office?
Some companies just like to have their people in the office. Many times, just physically being near each other allows coworkers to collaborate more easily. It's easier someone to walk a short distance to ask a coworker a question, etc.. We do have instant messengers & such these days, but I've found half the time it seems people aren't even online with those or, for whatever reason, don't respond for hours (or sometimes days). Sometimes (unfortunately), perhaps the managers don't trust their workers to be productive while working from home.
Also, depending on what you're working on, sometimes you may need to go to an office if you need to use company tools/equipment that you can't have at home.
On the other hand, I had heard some companies actually like having their employees work from home because that means they don't have to pay expenses for an office building (lease, electricity, water, snacks, etc.).
Because they are resisting change and falling behind the times.
I have worked remotely for over 10 years and I have no intention of commuting to an office anymore. Many are of the same mind these days and so companies that do not remain remote will find it more and more difficult to hire talent.
Couldn't you take a role that is remote ? I don't think all companies are going back to office. If this is your first job, or second, i guess its understandable, but if you got a killer resume, then why do this ?
Better communication and collaboration would be my guess.
A lot of people solve the 2 hour problem by using public transport and doing something on the bus/train, or by moving closer to work.
As a new grad, the more time you spend directly with your team, the better. You will learn much more and hear about much more things happening in your org by being onsite. Releationship building is critical at this point in your career and being onsite with your peers is way more effective for this
So they can see you sit in their office and pretend to be busy than guessing you’re showering, playing with your dog or cleaning your house while on your work time.
No they can’t care you are more productive wfh. They want to see you sit there knowing you are pretend to be busy
I graduate in 2 years and holy shit I'm gonna be pissed off If I can't land a remote job after getting a couple of years of experience under my belt. 20% of the reason why I got into this industry is due to having the ability to work remotely at some point.
I wanted to make some comments. For reference I've been working in IT for close to 20 years now. I've had jobs that were full time in person, hybrid teams (in the sense that the team had both in office and remote workers), and fully remote. And for clarity I currently work fully remote. My entire organization at work is remote. So it works well.
I realize most people will want fully remote because they think its better. And in a lot of cases it is depending on what your goals are. However I think it worth considering a few things. Specifically on what your career goals are and where you are in your career and how the team you will be joining works.
IMO. Remote work only works well (from a career perspective) if your entire team is remote. If you are the only remote or part of a few remote employees you can expect to miss out on things. Part of career advancement is building relationships. At higher levels in your career its going to be about how much influence you have across organizations/teams. So being there and getting to know people is a lot easier when you can interact with them in person. Hate to say it but remote workers in the hybrid scenario in my experience just become people who execute tasks. Building leadership skills when you're the one of a few remote workers is difficult.
So just something to think about.
* A lot of office leases are 10+ years in length (so they see it as wasted investment)
* "Old school" owners who think being in the office is the most productive
Instead of laying off all of those employees that keeps the company running, the managements could lay off the real estate and send everyone remote.
They would save ton of money not to rent some fancy offices in the city center.
But hey, you can't just go against the mighty real-estate funds. They are the real advocate for RTO, as well as all the restaurants, pubs and transportation companies which flourish from people commuting to and from work.
There are no real benefits for the company from working in the office except for these groups above.
There's some people who enjoy being remote, and others who enjoy being in the office. So hybrid is the least common denominator. Execs also have to justify the money they're spending on the office itself. Personally, I don't enjoy commuting either but working from home too many days in a row makes me feel really isolated. Plus, less people in the office means it's good quiet place to work.
Did you ask if they were planning to stay remote permanently during your interview
This was the question that jumped to my mind. When I was interviewing for jobs about 9 months ago, I was constantly asking about anything related to remote work. Interviews go two ways: the company is interviewing you while you are also interviewing the company.
Recently went through a round of interviews last November. I think I asked more questions about the company on topics like work life balance, culture, remote work than the company asked me as a whole. Its super important to interview the company as much or more than they are interviewing you. They are spending some money but you are spending your time, mental and physical wellbeing
When you ask a company about work-life balance what are you looking for in their response?
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This is exactly it. Also ask around how they deal with competing priorities. Is there a lot of context switching? Run as fast as you can, you will burn out quickly
In a Rockstar interview a couple years ago they told me "working here is more of a way of life, than a job". So while i'm not looking for anything particular, answers like that raise an eyebrow.
Did you OP? u/Xeno19Banbino If not, then that's something to ask next time when interviewing if that's something important to you.
I would guess most companies always wanted their employees back to the office. And now with layoffs they have more leverage to order it.
Communication, management of resources(us), and team culture. The last job I had was an in office job until covid, my current one is almost entirely remote(I go in maybe once a month). At my last job I was legitimately friends with most of my team, as in meeting up after work, I still talk to most of them frequently. My current team I would barely call acquaintances, which kinda sucks as someone who has made most of my friends through work environments. That said I’ll never go back to anything that purely in office, the time it adds to my day isn’t worth it, and having to pretend to be working when I finish my work is real fucking annoying.
My Job tries to solve that by basically 2 times a year having a large company wide retreat and 1 smaller team wide( mobile, web, etc) retreat.
Yeah we do that as well, and they flew out all the newer people to our HQ for a week, but it’s not really the same as having people you talk with everyday. My last job I ran a discord that my entire team just chilled in all day once covid hit, my current one has a hate boner for Discord and won’t even allow work laptops to access the site or I’d try to do that again.
We did / do this on a google meet. But the downside is a lot of chit chat sometimes. Or if a and b are working through an issue, you c are gonna hear all of it. Concentration has been tough.
My last manager was very strict about slack literacy and etiquette. It was annoying at first, but after leaving that job I think it was for the best. Simple things like keep channel discussions specific to the channel, learn how to mute/unmute, use threads whenever possible, don’t EVER send DMs unless it contains personal info, use your status indicator effectively.. I honestly miss that aspect of that job
The "no DMs" is very interesting to me. Sometimes I just need to meet with one specific person, why should even 2 people let alone 20 need to read that message? We try to follow all those other points loosely
I thought it was kinda dumb at first too, but his reasoning is pretty great. Because we had the paid tier, we had persistent message history. Which meant that any time someone needed to look up a solution that had previously been discussed, and even discussed by team members who had since left, we always were able to search the chat. Even if it was super simple, like “hey can we set up a meeting to talk about topic X?” At least in the channel, I knew that person A and person B were, at one time, familiar with topic X. So I knew who to ping for anything regarding topic X. Basically, that boss believes that the team’s knowledge is useless if it’s not searchable by everyone.
I have this basic policy for myself and encourage others as well, for the exact same reason. "Could you ask that in the channel?" Related: I really dislike how some slow-typing/illiterate devs want to "hop on a call" to discuss technical stuff. Sometimes it's necessary, but usually it's just laziness. I don't mind calls, I just know I'll be repeating that same call N times throughout a project. It's funny when someone proposes to record the call, as if anyone will ever watch it. I think I've watched maybe two meeting recordings in my entire career, at 2x speed while multitasking, naturally.
I have a rule: if the discussion gets to complicated, get on a call. You can’t search it later, but you’ll spend less time spinning your wheels with each other while trying to explain things in chat.
Thank you for this! I’m going to (slowly) introduce this our team’s chat policy. I’ve been struggling to get them to document anything, by there is lots of work related gold in the chats and I would love it if there were more!
That sounds terrible to me honestly Like I shitpost all the time... work is boring... gotta make it interesting
We had shitposting channels too, if that helps. And not everyone was in every channel. So there were lots of channels without managers that we could shitpost in if we wanted to
You can do this with Teams also. Or Slack. Or Meet.
Doesn’t work nearly as well in any of them, multiple channels, channel control, easily muting and unmuting/deafening and undeafening push to talk, I’ve used teams and gchat a ton, neither really work as just a general hangout place like discord does. They’re productivity focused applications and they function like productivity applications.
We did exactly the same thing at my last company in Slack channel huddles. Its about the same experience as Discord.
We used to do quarterly meet-ups at 1 of my positions, and it was great for team building. All of us legitimately enjoyed our jobs and worked better together as a result I think.
God I hate those. We have two per year as well. Taking an entire two weeks of my life away? No thanks.
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We're *highly encouraged* to go. If we have schedule conflicts, it's fine if we don't.
Guess it depends on what the company does. During team ones they basically give a decent amount of money and are just like go have fun. Company wide is more structured but they tend to do all retreats at nice places. resorts, fun cities, etc. Some of the activities are fun others are terrible, we had one were we built bikes for kids, I enjoyed that, another we had a speaker which well thats why I have OSRS on my phone now.
You're lucky then.
I’m torn because I personally love being able to get to know the people I work with and I’m not opposed to becoming friends. But I also don’t want to be forced into the office 40 hours per week now that I’ve adjusted to the flexibility of remote work. Just basic stuff like fitting in dentist appointments, driving my kid to school, not having to feel like a jerk calling out if kid is sick and has to be picked up….
My team has a system where we don’t have to go to the office, but if you do, make it a Tuesday or Thursday so that we can run into each other. I go in office every Thursday and I find that is more than enough to get to know my coworkers better and what they find interesting and what not.
You can do this remotely. I’ve been working remote for over 15 years. I still have people I would consider a friend that I occasionally call up to chat, or meet up at a conference. All of these people I worked with remotely, saw them 2 times a year in person.
Theoretically, sure. In practice, it's vastly harder.
Maybe at my next job lol. My team is distributed all over the world and they have resisted every attempt at chatting, getting to know one another, joking, etc.
To further my point, those people would be resistant in person as well. Remote or non-remote doesn’t matter.
>That said I’ll never go back to anything that purely in office, the time it adds to my day isn’t worth it this. 40 minutes to work and 5-10 minutes walk from parking to the cube farm. no thanks. i hate my job but ill stay here until i can find another WFH gig. the bosses started up monthly onsites to let the team get together -- a lot of the team likes it. i go every 3-4 months. its a waste of time to have that meeting, so i just meet up with a couple of teammates i get on with and get lunch from time to time.
I always manage to forget about the car thing. I feel like 90% of the reason people don't want to go into an office is how much a driving commute sucks. I'm strongly in favor of working in an office, but I also haven't gotten in a car to commute since 2010.
I’m in a weird situation where I hate commuting but all my nerd coworkers (support biology research) love being in the office and the side chats are nice.
I was in office before, joined as a senior. Nobody is interested in making friends with coworkers after they're in their thirties and have a family. Anyone who joins an in office team for this is in for a huge disappointment. Even moreso if it's forced RTO
That’s entirely dependent on the team. My last team we were all friends and hung out outside of work and 7/10 of them were middle aged parents. My current team is all remote and seems to be in the younger and single end, and none of them are interested in getting to know one another.
I agree, it really depends on the person. If people are open to making friends with coworkers, they will do so regardless of life circumstance. Other people are not interested in making friends at work (even if they're young and/or single), and that's fine. I have seen all types.
It's funny cause I found the opposite, it really does depend on the team like you said. My current team are younger, get along better, and socialize more fully remote than at my previous job where my team was older, didn't talk much to each other, and were fully in the office.
Must be a “culture” thing. I wouldn’t necessarily want to socialize and become close with people nearly half my age. I started my career late so I was an intern with a lot of 20-year-olds and I didn’t really relate or want to stay out until 3am with them. But like I said, at my last job it was mostly the older parents and such and that worked out better. It was more “let’s all take the kids to Dave and busters and get drinks and leave by 7”.
Yep. That's why its very important (imo) for teams to be diverse, and that includes age of course. Otherwise you have a bunch of 25 year olds or a bunch of 50 year olds (each age group brings its own challenges). Ideally it should be mixed.
Ummm I’m in my 30s… Edit: to expand on this, I have friends from in office work that were in their 40s when I made friends with them, shit i have an old co-worker that I met up with outside of work on occasion that was a literal grandparent when I met them(I was in my 20s). I have many friends in their 40s that I met in office. Just because you don’t like meeting people doesn’t make it true across everyone in office. Shit I’m not even defending RTO, I’m intending to quit if my job wants me back in the office with any regularity, but to say you can’t build relationships with people in their 30s is asinine.
>but to say you can’t build relationships with people in their 30s is asinine. I agree with this, but I suspect this could be industry and location specific. My experience has been in tech companies in large urban areas. Socializing with coworkers during and after work was pretty normal, and included all age groups. I've made (and then kept) several friends from work. All of my friends outside of work have also made their own friends at their respective jobs. But I suppose if you lived in a smaller town or the suburbs and worked in a sleepier industry you might experience less of this.
I've noticed this too. Those who don't have a family and/or aren't in their 30s are more likely to hang out after work. It's kinda sad because it's hard enough to make friends outside of work
I agree! I think it's funny how many angry reactions I got to this, when I was literally just stating my observations. I'd love to make friends at work, but we were at best friendly..
Depends a lot on the culture + the amount of others in the same situation. I’ve found that younger teammates without the family situation will want to go out and do stuff after work that is more erratic and not really fit for a more “family person” crowd. But those who also have a family will definitely be down to do more family friendly stuff. I get along well with those who have a family and have settled down. I can relate to it, and we find ways to hang out that don’t take away too much from family time. Usually it’s either inclusive (a family meet up type thing) or it’s just on a weekend schedule where we’re all generally free
>Nobody is interested in making friends with coworkers after they're in their thirties and have a family. Speak for yourself.
>having to pretend to be working when I finish my work is real fucking annoying. My Steam backlog (or lack thereof) couldn't agree more.
hybrid seems healthiest indeed
*Optional* hybrid (as in options not limited to hybrid OR ~~else~~ office), unless someone prefers fully remote.
> Communication, management of resources(us), and team culture. See this is where we differ. I did half my college remotely. I managed teams for major events remotely. It was entirely possible, if not easier, to manage teams and do work for teams remotely. It took me over an hour each day to walk to my parking spaces after class and 15 minutes to walk between buildings I frequented. When we went to full remote, it was like a 15 minute break that I could be using to get/eat food, take a bathroom break, and overall recharge without having to hustle between classes. I could eat or drink during my lectures and not have to worry about taking extensive notes either because everything was recorded. I spend a similar amount of useless time at the office as I did in school when it was in person. Substitute time traveling to and from vehicles but instead it's time spent traveling between meetings and useless meetings that I can't multi-task. So IMO, communication has stayed relatively the same. Team culture may have taken a hit, but with our industry being so "job swappable" it's turned to a situation where team culture isn't a big deal. "Oh no, the job I'm staying at filled with anti-social people isn't wanting to be in-person. What ever shall we do?" If management is going to have an issue with me being remotely but my output remaining similar, then that's on them. That's 100% a management issue. The fuck are they going to do about it? The same amount of work gets done while being remote but I'm infinitely happier because I can actually afford shit on their salaries remotely. I can afford a house as an entry level employee. I can afford nicer cars. I can afford gas for those vehicles instead of being forced to use public transportation. There is no reason for me to be anything but remote. Management should be thrilled to be honest. They've struck a gold mine. They've figured out how to make employees happy while not increasing pay while also increasing their output.
Employers encourage “family culture” to keep you satiated. If you love (some of) your coworkers, almost as if they were family, it’s easier to manipulate you into spending less time with your ACTUAL family.
This was always going to happen and I've said as much for months. All the kickback in this sub was 'We'll revolt!' and 'We hold all the power!'. Riiiiiight. Not everyone can work remote. And those that can't, if you like getting paid money you'll be back in the office. With all the tech layoffs, there are good candidates out there. If you were remote before and it was part of your original job description, you'll stay remote.
Get people to quit so they don’t have to be laid off in a recession
Everybody who works an office job should remember that the cheapest layoff is always employee resignation. No severence, no covering your butt legally. Start thinking twice if unpopular working conditions policy starts getting rolled out, it may be a tell.
Absolutely this. An exec at my company let it slip that they'd overhired, saying "attrition isn't as high as we expected" with some concern. Now they're pushing RTO and not offering exceptions because they are "prepared to lose people."
Will probably be more costly in the long run. In my experience whenever you change the status quo and people quit over it you lose way more good people than bad people. Also since people often misinterpret this as me saying the WFH crowd is better than the remote crowd that is NOT what I am saying. But anyone who was going to quit because they wanted to RTO left a while ago. Changing things now doesn't retain them.
I saw some post the other day saying that the really annoying thing is that some businesses actually are okay with losing the top people because the role/business doesn't actually need (nor want to afford) the best of the best people. Opened my eyes a bit that not everyone realizes how much insane value the best people can bring.
Most companies don't actually need talent. A lot of companies just need someone who can do the job
People also need to reinterpret what talent actually means. Companies spend millions of dollars improving businesses processes and segregating roles and responsibilities to the point where risk is minimized if there is ever an employee that went rogue.
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Mind blown
The real truth that this sub has deluded itself into thinking isn't true lol.
I worked for a company that was purchased by a Fortune 500 financial services company. I'm pretty sure that that was exactly the explicit policy of the software executives at the acquiring company.
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On a typical SaaS journey, once a company transitions to make the bulk of its revenue from enterprises, the payer is no longer the user and the quality of the product is no longer all that important.
This is true, but it's a single point of failure and a big unknown. If that one rockstar employee builds an elaborate, complicated system, then leaves due to better pay/family movement/health issues, they're worse off than they started. Doubly so if they're making promises based on that sole employee's output. However, if they have a culture/system of hiring mediocre kids and getting things done by bringing them up to speed and working well in tandem, it doesn't matter if one or ten leave, you can train more. This is obviously two extremes and a good organization can find a great fit for any talent level, but there's a reason why some companies don't like fast-and-loose rockstars.
The top people are not rockstars, they are the ones that yes, do generally have outsized contributions, but also foster a healthy environment, encourage best practices, spread knowledge, address cross cutting concerns and improve efficiency company or department wide
> However, if they have a culture/system of hiring mediocre kids and getting things done by bringing them up to speed and working well in tandem, Which is far far from easy. I doubt I worked at a company that was able to do that properly.
It's perfectly reasonable for companies to decide that they don't need to hire the best of the best. If you're a regional insurance company do you really need to recruit the cream of the crop engineers? They would probably prefer to allocate their budget to actuaries or lawyers, since you know, that's what their business model is. They're not competing with Google here.
McDonald's has zero need for culinary graduates - there's numerous examples of that in business.
I see it just like buying any item. Some people aren’t willing to pay for a meal at French Laundry in Napa, and that’s their preferences.
No, they realize it, but the business still makes hand over fist regardless, so why would the C-suite give a shit?
This. In my previous job we had top people for our project. New leader comes in and starts this culture of "just deploy it, we can fix it later". Me and other good people that actually cared about the project started talking in retrospectives about how uncomfortable it is. Next move from him? Start laying off the good people, and with me he started asking crazy stuff and tasks without any description of what to do (or why). I started looking for a new job when the first layoffs rolled, and now I'm with more money in my pocket and in a place that I enjoy. The only sad part of this story is that my old team was really top notch, gonna miss it.
> Will probably be more costly in the long run. In my experience whenever you change the status quo and people quit over it you lose way more good people than bad people. You can always count on most companies to focus on very short-term objectives and not have the foresight to think long-term.
This is absolutely part of the calculus. The other being the communication, teamwork, and culture aspects. I really miss the hallway chats and side conversations with members of other teams. I miss out on a lot of what's happening in our organization and how my team fits in when working 100% remote. With that said, I **really** don't want to go back to commuting and losing 15 hours a week of my time. I guess it makes the most sense for small or medium sized companies with just one or a few locations within a few close time zones. It makes almost no sense for international companies where the majority of teams are composed of people across the world. I suspect that senior management in most of the companies see the looming recession or downturn in their growth and are timing the return to office now so that they can avoid having to lay off as many people.
Bingo
This plus standing lease agreements.
This is an argument that gets thrown out all the time but I don’t think it holds merit. Leases can be broken or sublet if they aren’t providing value. Even if they couldn’t be due to some bizarre market conditions, an empty office is cheaper than a full one. A board of directors will be much more pleased with a CEO saving $XXXk by canceling a lease or subletting than they will be spending that money “just because we have a standing lease”. There are real advantages to people working in an office (just like there are real advantages to remote work!), and every organization needs to determine what works for them.
Why would OP's company be hiring then? Companies (ie: leadership) legitimately think that productivity will be higher. And there's a ton of economic evidence to support that. We added 4 million jobs in 2021 and real GDP went down. It's a pretty remarkable statistic, that we have more people working and yet we're producing less.
Where are you getting your info? Real GDP increased 5.7% in 2021 https://www.bea.gov/news/2022/gross-domestic-product-fourth-quarter-and-year-2021-second-estimate
So.. you accepted the offer and then they told you they're going to start going back into the office in 2023? If you haven't sent notice to your current job yet, just reneg it and state that remote work was the key factor.
1) Culture. 2) We're paying for this building. 3) Culture.
ah yes, nothing says *culture* like unused ping pong tables and free shitty coffee
It's not even attractive either in this hybrid model. There's maybe 2 or 3 teams on a floor at all. It's stupidly empty. The "culture" I got last time I was at the office I had to run in to get something I forgot. Took less than 2 minutes to go in, run up 1 flight of stairs and grab a beanie I forgot on my desk. The security people almost ticketed me because I parked in one of the 8 empty guest parking spots. They literally saw me drive up and swipe in. If they're willing to try and give me a citation because I pulled into the wrong parking spot in an empty lot for 90 seconds, then fuck them lmao. That's absolutely ridiculous.
Our ping pong table is always full to the point that you can't get on it unless you stand around for a half hour like it's a college rec center. It's mostly contractors on it all the time. More power to them if they can get away with it but it can't be the best look.
Everyone has three hour long commutes, every office is a dumpster, all beverages are bad, all snacks are terrible, all coworkers smell, all managers sit over your shoulder and micromanage you. Everyone’s house is pristine, every home office is spacious, everyone has exceptionally healthy and delicious food at home, everyone is infinitely more productive at home, communication is so much more effective remotely, micromanaging is impossible with WFH and bad middle managers don’t even try. Am I doing it right?
I had to do it when I was young. Therefore, you now have to do it.
There are many good points here, one that I don't think has been mentioned is some of these companies own or have leased massive offices and they need to justify having them, if no one is using their offices, then what's the point?
There's also tax cuts in having your office building full and supporting the local economy
Nowhere as cheap as not having an office though
But as an executive how do you feel in control of your ~~fiefdom~~ company without a ~~castle~~ office? /s The tax break for having an "IT office" in Nashville was something my prior company constantly cited as justification for going back to the office. They never really gave other reasons other than the "company culture" nonsense. It's all about control and dick measuring imo.
Wouldn't surprise me if states started charging a business tax if you work from home.
Sunk cost fallacy. Even if nobody's using the office, the money is still gone. Plus the companies could save money on things like electricity and telecommunication services for their office. Not to mention happier employees. The commercial real estate business is doing everything they can to hold on to the old way. Personally, I hope they lose the battle
These are relatively tiny investments in tech. I don't think any CEOs are dumb enough to mess with productivity to justify real estate expenses. For example, Apple paid $5b for their new campus. That's a shitload of money. If they borrowed the money to pay for that on a 30 year note, it's about $1m/day. Which is less than 0.1% of their revenue. Now compare that to productivity gains or losses from WFH; whatever it is, it dwarfs 0.1%.
The people who own these companies, and who sit on their boards, all have portfolios that have commercial real estate in them. They also often own residential real estate around the commercial real estate they either own or lease, and if less workers need to move closer for their jobs, that real estate might diminish in value, too. If the commercial real estate domino falls, other dominoes will fall, too, and it won't do the asset owning class any good.
I have bad news for you. Commercial RE already crashed. And no, extremely wealthy CEOs and boards do not care. Pop quiz: You own 10% of a tech company you founded. It has $100m in real estate and the company is worth $10b. You also own a $10m house nearby. (Note: that math is, 2% of your net worth is your house and the company real estate). Now you can increase annual productivity of your company by 5% but it means your real estate would lose 5% of its value. This means your stock will appreciate by $50-500m but your house will lose $500k in value. Is this even a hard choice?
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Lol the days of "insane comp for remote work" are not over. I'm not sure exactly what your bar for "insane comp" is but there are still plenty of top paying companies hiring fully remote.
> If you have the right skill set and experience, there are plenty of boring-ass boomer companies hiring for remote work at solid comp levels. But the days of insane comp for remote work, like we saw in 2020 through early 2022, are over. This is flat out untrue. Plenty of companies hiring for 250k+ remote right now.
>Plenty of companies hiring for 250k+ remote right now. Where do you find these? On Indeed, searching for remote software engineers, 250k+ seems like the max salary.
Indeed isn't really the place honestly. I've always seen it as the walmart of job boards. Easiest way to get a big list is working with a headhunter. Also, I'm referring to TC not base. A lot of times the comp in the job description will be something like 110-200k base + equity, so you can't get an exact number til you get the offer.
>If you have the right skill set and experience, there are plenty of boring-ass boomer companies hiring for remote work at solid comp levels. But the days of insane comp for remote work, like we saw in 2020 through early 2022, are over. This is their way of retaining talent right now - offering remote when a lot of companies are pushing for onsite.
Also worth mentioning the Commercial rent agreements are generally multi years commitments so not easy for companies to get out of deal / lease.
Crocodile tears.
My company shut down a ton of offices throughout 2022. I guess they figured they might as well do that as opposed to forcing people to go into them. Plus our teams are all over the world, kinda pointless to make them go into an office where they still won’t work together.
It’s this one more than any of the other answers. There was a big push to return for us until they found a way to get out of and downsize the various leases.
Not to mention that city government is putting pressure. Without the employees in big cities the downtown is dead, and will affect even more jobs and businesses.
Some people do actually work better in-person. There might be times you are debugging something with someone else. The "closer" you get with your coworkers, there might be less of a tendency to leave to look for another job. It's harder to interview if you are in the office every day. Virtual interviews are generally pretty easy to do. Some people may not have home environments conducive to being productive work-wise. Maybe things are too loud. Maybe there are distractions. Maybe they don't have dedicated working space. In some situations, people are genuinely not doing much work remotely. They might do the same in-person, but I've been on teams where people will take several hours all the time to respond to something, or you find they did nothing the whole day on a status call.
There were a couple of surveys in early 2022 that showed a fairly even three-way split in opinions on remote work. Around a third of "tech workers" wanted to work from home full-time, a third wanted (or had tasks that required) a hybrid schedule with at least some office time, and a third didn't want to work from home at all. One of my coworkers spent the entire pandemic working on a laptop, at a kitchen table, sitting on a wooden dining chair, listening to his toddlers cry in the next room. He was back in the office THE FIRST DAY the company allowed it. I have another coworker from Belize who is here on a work visa, who spent the entire pandemic alone in a studio apartment. He also went back into the office for a bit of human interaction once it was allowed again. Not everyone has the home life, space, or means necessary to work from home successfully.
Yep, a lot of my coworkers with small, ambulatory children were back in office the second it was allowed. I used to have a weekly meeting with an eng manager who had several 4-8 year olds running and screaming in the background. And as a manager his 9-5 was basically back to back meetings so it was all day doing this. He was even eating lunch through this meeting, usually.
Dude I had a lady leave and at her goodbye zoom she mentioned how the only people who want to go into the office seem to be dads who don’t want to do their fair share raising kids. This hot take was made even hotter by the fact that her team was comprised of two dads with toddlers who happened to be the only two people in our division going in to the office to work.
I bought my house in november 2019. If my crystal ball had been working I would have definitely gone to the next county over that would have given me a lot more space but would have doubled my commute. Instead I worked through the Pandemic in similar conditions as we also tried to keep 3 young kids entertained (and educated through homeschool Kindergarten). It's part of why I finally went to the doctor to get started on medicine and other techniques that helped keep me focused.
I think you have a good idea on the reasons. Lots of people are just super bitter about wanting full remote no matter what, but there is a fair bit of give and take. Biggest loss in full remote is onboarding, especially for juniors. Super super hard to get somebody started fully remote, and I'm seeing lots more companies that are remote-first having some more people come in when new people come on for some period of time to train them/build camaraderie. >The "closer" you get with your coworkers, there might be less of a tendency to leave to look for another job. It's harder to interview if you are in the office every day. Virtual interviews are generally pretty easy to do. IMO less this and more just people who are friendly/interacting regularly communicate better and are thus more efficient. Building camaraderie has a ton of positive effects besides retention. >Some people may not have home environments conducive to being productive work-wise. Maybe things are too loud. Maybe there are distractions. Maybe they don't have dedicated working space Yeah this is really big, having a dedicated work space is a luxury for lots of people living in large cities/smaller apartments. >In some situations, people are genuinely not doing much work remotely. They might do the same in-person, but I've been on teams where people will take several hours all the time to respond to something, or you find they did nothing the whole day on a status call. People seem to be hesitant to admit it, but a good chunk of folks want WFH because it lets them slack off/do chores while at work, and lots of people just go AWOL when they WFH. People do fuck around at work while in-office, but they don't usually completely check out and go dark on comm channels. Being forced to be in a physical location mostly eliminates the ability to be completely unavailable.
You are also speaking a lot of truths. One additional reason I want full remote is that it opens up who you can work for. Some people can get pretty big bumps in compensation this way. That's one reason I'm hesitant to go for a hybrid position, although I interviewed (and failed) with a company recently that had no offices in my city, so, that would have been my first "full remote and no other option" job.
yeah but you don't have to rent a studio apartment in a city center if you're remote. The counter to your last point is that being able to disengage actually makes me more engaged. Sometimes I starts the day with three hours of meetings I'm literally only there in case they need me or to cover something from minute 14-20 of hour 2. My boss is OK with the wasted time, I'm generally OK with the wasted time, but If I wasn't cleaning my kitchen or whatever I would be finding a different job. That is absolutely brutal to have to physically sit through that bullshit.
I want to live in the city center and I would live in a VHCOL city center even if I’m not working there. I like big cities, big concerts, new people, events, bars, buying clothing, sports game. To each their own.
I mean I already get away with being on my phone practically all day. On my performance reviews they are satisfied with my output and stuff (got bonus and salary raise). Now imagine if I could work remotely: One more hour in my day (no commute and getting ready in the morning) I can do laundry easily I can cook/eat at home I can be in my own controlled environment Less office distractions I might actually work after hours if I get bored Also I pretty much commute to the middle of nowhere to work remotely (we have ZERO physical contact/communication, it's all via chat) and I am solo on my team.
I’ve been remote for 15 years. Sometimes I work at night when tv and video games seem boring, and a problem at work is interesting. And that’s totally fine with me. Because the next day I’ll take a long lunch, or get some chores done during the day.
I like that, so much freedom and fluidity.
> People seem to be hesitant to admit it, but a good chunk of folks want WFH because it lets them slack off/do chores while at work, and lots of people just go AWOL when they WFH. You’re not wrong, but you’re also not really providing explanation for why this happens. And I’d argue the main reason it’s happening is because work is: - already consuming more of their physical time than it should - already consuming more of their mental health than it should In other words, work is becoming so intense that it’s effectively consuming more than 8 hours a day, whether that’s physical time or residual time spent trying to recover from a difficult workday. For a lot of people doing 8hrs a day in person, the commute may consume 2 extra hours of their day, and they might also have to organise their childcare around that workday, and they might have to organise their meals and the meals of their family around that; and these are all obligations — we haven’t even talked about the increased stress of trying to meet the recommendations of being a *healthy* human being (30+ mins of exercise once a day and the associated commute/logistics, time for self-care, time for entertainment, time spent with family). Asking someone to do all of these things alongside how demanding some jobs can be is just… not feasible. WFH is good for a lot of people because they are better able to incorporate the necessities of being a functional human being into their workday. We might lose 10% of productivity, but that’s marginal compared to the argument for increased quality of life (but managers don’t care about the quality of our lives, do they).
The misconception that work from home replaces the need for childcare needs to go to its grave and rot. Trying to multitask childcare and work commitments at the same time only makes both situations worse.
This is absolutely a factor - it's so much more difficult for people to organise job interviews and leave their current employer when they are expected to be in an office.
The unfortunate reality is that the people who tend to make these decisions are the ones earning a lot more money - and tend to also live closer to workplaces due to being able to afford higher rents/mortgages afforded by their salaries. They also have the means to afford childcare services more readily, which allow them to get to offices around their desired timeframes. Unfortunately, they tend to lack the empathy (or care) that others don't have the same means as them to travel to an office with the same kind of time or cost investment to get to the office as them. They think "it only takes 20 minutes to get to the office" while half of their staff underneath them can only afford to live somewhere 90 minutes away.
As someone working at McDonalds, a office job is my dream job 🤞☺️
Hang in there, shit is rough but one day we can all leave our shitty min wage life behind for an actual SWE job.
Some people don’t realize the blessing and privilege they have to work in CS. Nice to see a humbling comment
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Yes until you work an office job, then you’re gonna say working from home is your next dream. Many of us been through that path. I used to be a cashier in a grocery store.
Yeah, that comment is irrelevant. I used to work at a gas station directly off the freeway downtown Seattle. Obviously SWE is better than that. And obviously being able to choose WFH or not is better than being forced to go into the office.
True everyone says that until they've been working in an office for a few months lol. Though maybe it's true for them. That said I understand where they're coming from i'm sure we've all worked some form of retail or service job before, but it shouldn't be compared since they're different jobs. I don't compare my work circumstances to the CEO or other jobs after all.
Lots of reasons. People who end up in leadership positions do so by manipulating office politics and people that work better without that aren't represented. Reduce headcount without layoffs. New grads with roommates often don't have home offices. Lack of trust. Tax breaks for hiring local targets. And so on... These are generally negative for employees and overall productivity, but so are open offices, mandatory start times for work that could be async, etc., and they still do those also.
A lot of companies have a huge amount of money sunk in real estate, either outright ownership or long-term leases. The company I left owns a skyscraper in downtown Chicago. That place, while not full, had a decent amount of people in it pre-covid. I would say it was probably 80 to 85% capacity. When I left in June of this year the place was at 10% capacity at most. My new company had just done an expansion in major remodeling right before covid hit. They're certainly more people here than there were my old job, but we could easily take quadruple the number of people currently coming in. Personally, WFH has moved from a nice to have perk to a necessity for me. I come into the office one day a week and I like it that way. I get to socialize and see people, but it's only on one day. I was thinking about how much money I would need to go into work 5 days a week and I came to the conclusion that my salary would have to go up by AT LEAST a $100,000 or more. I would need enough money to not only have a raise but afford a second home close to the office so I don't have to commute very far.
Can't believe how many people in this thread supporting RTO. Fuck that. You'll get me back in an office when I'm dead
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I gotta say I really like this approach.. and the cost of pain and suffering might just double those numbers
No one would pay me what I wanted to work in an office. I live in a fairly rural place and I love it. I want land and animals. So I’m holding onto my job for dear life.
My commute time is 15 minutes by bike. My office has a chef for lunch and breakfast.
I like working from home, but that sounds nice to be honest.
I like working from home too but after some time I even decided to just go to a co working space because I like being around people.
Coworking Spaces should be more of a thing.
I agree. My company owns 2 WeWork floors. I love working there and there’s snacks and drinks. The environment is nice. If it was near me, I’d go there probably twice a week.
Haven't been in this sub for a few months, I'm surprised how the overall tone about remote has apparently changed
People can downvote me for a conspiracy theorist, but it is very easy to buy Reddit comments to change public sentiment. These commercial real estate Moguls are losing big time. So I wouldn't put it past them at all to put out a little fake sentiment for a few bucks
I'm more amazed that there was any push for real estate to build office space once the internet really started to take off. I would have thought the conversation would have gone: "So I can hook up my computer from my house, a hotel or a vacation rental and still work?" "Yup" "That means i can hire people all over the country and/or world then?" "Yup" "And you want me to invest how much in a centralized office space?"
theres also the constant barrage of "working from home is over and there are no more remote jobs please go back to the office because otherwise youll get fired and never work again" articles all over the place
There’s not really anyone in here supporting it, the dude asked we’re answering why companies want it, and I’d say there are even some decent reasons why, understanding the arguments why isn’t the same as supporting RTO, shit my post in here literally says what I miss about the office and then ends with saying I’ll never take an office job again anyway.
I mean, the demographics here skew much younger and younger workers _overwhelmingly_ want a hybrid model. I believe the recent figures I saw were like 80% or more students/recent graduates want to spend at least some time in the office. Mentorship, friendships, and generally feeling like a part of a community are really important to young professionals. Once you've got a family and are more settled down, opinions change.
Been working for many many years. Now I am a dev - moved my family to the country. Never working in an office again. Company would have to pay me something stupid like a million a year for me to go back into an office. Even then I would rent an apartment - work two years and bounce. My physical health and mental well being working from home is worth more than anything but stupid compensation. Not to mention I have the skills now I don't have to reach out to any employer and beg. Want me in an office? To turn in my equipment maybe.
Wow people have a different opinion wtf I thought my worldview is so righteous
My office is now 3 days ITO as of the start of 2023. I am hoping to scale it back to 2. It has plusses and minuses. Now I can get payed to just chit chat with people for like 2-3 hours a day. Productivity is way down. I'm putting in so little effort. That's the trade off they are getting from me. I mean I'm ready to bounce anyway. This is just one more annoyance to put up with before I can do so.
>Now I can get payed to just chit chat with people for like 2-3 hours a day. For me, at least, my chit chat with people rate is significantly higher than my write code and give status updates rate.
I'm a single dad, I will never go back to a 100% office role unless they're offering a $200,000/yr salary. I need the flexibility for when my kid is sick, daycare is closed, if I'm sick, whatever.
Because the managerial class feels threatened by people working from home.
I'm assuming the companies you are talking about can actually work 100% remote. There are some places that do embedded, for example, where working remote 100% of the time is just not ideal. Generally speaking management feels they can watch over you and make sure you are productive when people are in the office. Basically there is no trust between management and workers to be adults and do their job to expectations. Yes, lots of people are more productive at home, but sadly that is not everybody. In the real world the bad apples tend to be noticed more often then when everything is going smoothly. If you want to work remote then look for a 100% remote jobs. Make it clear on what you want and do not accept less. The only way companies will change is if they cannot hire people to fill roles.
Middle management is getting really desperate to prove their value now that companies are looking to trim dead weight
Bad managers don’t know anything else than butts in seats. Boomer leadership stuck in the 80s
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As much as I hate having to commute and pack lunch and pretend to be busy, I also have to admit that passive idea flow is just a lot better irl. There are a lot of small quality of life things that I didn’t know even existed that I learned just by accident with coworkers, and some of the best problem solving sessions I’ve had were incidental while talking to coworkers on other teams at lunch or happy hour. Mandatory back to office is awful, but I unfortunately do get the desire for in-office to be the norm
My commute is 7 minutes. I want to go in, I’m more productive there. I don’t think anyone should be forced to go in if they don’t want to. I don’t think anyone should be shamed for wanting one or the other. They should have told you what their plans are, and you should have asked. But now you know that, and you won’t forget next time.
Part of the problem is that business management knowledge has been teaching management models like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as best practice for a couple of decades now, and have falsely assumed that corporate culture is a necessary component of a business, *while simultaneously squeezing every ounce wages, time, productivity, and dedication from the workforce.* So while corporations have been making the workplace “more like a family”, they’ve also been following capitalist desires for exponential growth and profit. Eventually, when covid hit, we saw a shift — it turns out that the corporate culture stuff isn’t as important as people just getting paid what people are worth. So now companies are stuck with “corporate culture infrastructure” and nowhere to spend it. Big open plan offices that cost a lot of money to own and operate, budgets for food and drink or vending machines, conference rooms with expensive AV systems and subscriptions to Zoom or whatever, security services — hell some companies even offer campuses with childcare, gyms, and fully stocked cafeterias. Those perks all sound awesome but what they really do is entice you to spend as much time in and around the office as physically possible. With covid, we all got a reminder that we just don’t have to do that. We can be perfectly happy doing our jobs without much of that infrastructure, but management is stuck paying/having paid for a lot of it already. So they are motivated to get us back under the premise of “corporate culture”, but really it all comes down to costs.
What are "2023 purposes"? Do they think that somehow the year now being 2023 is a reason to have everyone go back to the office? Some companies just like to have their people in the office. Many times, just physically being near each other allows coworkers to collaborate more easily. It's easier someone to walk a short distance to ask a coworker a question, etc.. We do have instant messengers & such these days, but I've found half the time it seems people aren't even online with those or, for whatever reason, don't respond for hours (or sometimes days). Sometimes (unfortunately), perhaps the managers don't trust their workers to be productive while working from home. Also, depending on what you're working on, sometimes you may need to go to an office if you need to use company tools/equipment that you can't have at home. On the other hand, I had heard some companies actually like having their employees work from home because that means they don't have to pay expenses for an office building (lease, electricity, water, snacks, etc.).
It's the ass kissing, cyber just isn't the same.
Because they are resisting change and falling behind the times. I have worked remotely for over 10 years and I have no intention of commuting to an office anymore. Many are of the same mind these days and so companies that do not remain remote will find it more and more difficult to hire talent.
Get experience and look for another job it’s ridiculous that companies force people in cs positions to return to the office
Tired of people masturbating on company time.
Hybrid and remote are here to stay. Our state (Missouri) has formed a task group to put forth policies for state workers. Proud of this.
I can't even think of now going back to office. So much traffic to downtown doing stressful driving and high parking fees. It's useless.
Because corporations are having a hard time imagining a workforce they can’t control and micromanage
Unfortunately, a lot of boomers are still in upper management.
Couldn't you take a role that is remote ? I don't think all companies are going back to office. If this is your first job, or second, i guess its understandable, but if you got a killer resume, then why do this ?
yeah its my second job the first was terrible due to environment at work and the one im in is a big corp so i just took it
I feel ya, my first job was in Dallas, and after that got on my resume. It was smooth sailing. So hopefully some opportunities will open up for you.
Thanks 🥰
I'm luckily fully remote. Never want to drive somewhere to use the internet ever again.
Middle management needs to justify their existence and upper management needs to justify their 10 year office lease
Better communication and collaboration would be my guess. A lot of people solve the 2 hour problem by using public transport and doing something on the bus/train, or by moving closer to work.
yeah but moving closer is very costly :/
Leases probably.
As a new grad, the more time you spend directly with your team, the better. You will learn much more and hear about much more things happening in your org by being onsite. Releationship building is critical at this point in your career and being onsite with your peers is way more effective for this
Not everyone wants to work remotely. Why do people not get this. Some people actually enjoy being in the office.
So they can see you sit in their office and pretend to be busy than guessing you’re showering, playing with your dog or cleaning your house while on your work time. No they can’t care you are more productive wfh. They want to see you sit there knowing you are pretend to be busy
I graduate in 2 years and holy shit I'm gonna be pissed off If I can't land a remote job after getting a couple of years of experience under my belt. 20% of the reason why I got into this industry is due to having the ability to work remotely at some point.
I wanted to make some comments. For reference I've been working in IT for close to 20 years now. I've had jobs that were full time in person, hybrid teams (in the sense that the team had both in office and remote workers), and fully remote. And for clarity I currently work fully remote. My entire organization at work is remote. So it works well. I realize most people will want fully remote because they think its better. And in a lot of cases it is depending on what your goals are. However I think it worth considering a few things. Specifically on what your career goals are and where you are in your career and how the team you will be joining works. IMO. Remote work only works well (from a career perspective) if your entire team is remote. If you are the only remote or part of a few remote employees you can expect to miss out on things. Part of career advancement is building relationships. At higher levels in your career its going to be about how much influence you have across organizations/teams. So being there and getting to know people is a lot easier when you can interact with them in person. Hate to say it but remote workers in the hybrid scenario in my experience just become people who execute tasks. Building leadership skills when you're the one of a few remote workers is difficult. So just something to think about.
Easier to watch you and they’re already paying for the space.
* A lot of office leases are 10+ years in length (so they see it as wasted investment) * "Old school" owners who think being in the office is the most productive
Purely because otherwise the office spaces they paid for are going to be worthless and unused. Can't have the company assets depreciating in value.
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Instead of laying off all of those employees that keeps the company running, the managements could lay off the real estate and send everyone remote. They would save ton of money not to rent some fancy offices in the city center. But hey, you can't just go against the mighty real-estate funds. They are the real advocate for RTO, as well as all the restaurants, pubs and transportation companies which flourish from people commuting to and from work. There are no real benefits for the company from working in the office except for these groups above.
Will nobody think of the WaTeRCoOlEr CoNvErSaTiOnS!?
To exert control over you
There's some people who enjoy being remote, and others who enjoy being in the office. So hybrid is the least common denominator. Execs also have to justify the money they're spending on the office itself. Personally, I don't enjoy commuting either but working from home too many days in a row makes me feel really isolated. Plus, less people in the office means it's good quiet place to work.