This is silly. I for one is fully ready to return to the office. Sacrificing two hours of my life to commute five days a week is a small price for making my boss feel more in control. And what's a bit of traffic congestion and burnt gasoline when it's offset by AMAZING culture of our open office? We will fix global warming in some other way. I am at my peal performance when I work in a bazaar-like environment with people walking and talking around my tiny desk. I miss the corporate propaganda on the walls and free snacks full of sugar and preservatives. I miss the germs and viruses that made me stronger. Even if I get Delta variant and suffer serious health damage to sit in the office, it's a perfectly reasonable tradeoff. The pointless shitcode I write at home is just not the same as the pointless shitcode I write at the office. I can't put my finger at what's missing, but something definitely does.
Why is “amazing culture” always parroted by managers who are typically loud and extroverted and think it is amazing because they get to strut around and dash from conference room to conference room.
If people dont want to go back then you by definition do not have an amazing in office culture.
If your culture is predicated on being in person, some less dysfunctional company is going to eat you alive.
My teams works in what I think of as a technically hard space.
Once you have sufficiently disambiguated and broken down a problem, everyone can be remote and focus on execution on their own time.
For us, however, technical design discussions and how that all relates to our business needs has not gone that well while working remote. Pretty much everyone on the team acknowledges this.
We’ve tried to use Omnigraffle and some other tools while screen sharing remotely, but people admit that it’s easy to zone out or get disengaged during the discussion.
Quite frankly, at least for some domains, I just don’t see a 100% remote work force. In my technical space, it might actually be doable if everyone on your team is already experienced and has some domain mastery.
I’m writing all this because sometimes I see a certain attitude that companies who don’t 100% embrace remote work for every role are misguided or arrogant. I’m not convinced that’s true.
So, I'll preface this that maybe this only applies to my workplace and IMO what I'm going to write might be rude.
I also work in a technically hard space and remote work isn't perfect, specifically because there is a hardware component to my job. However, I really think its not a huge deal because I think people are overestimating how good communication was pre covid. I have generally observed that people who I didn't really understand or who were simply bad communicators in person, are bad in a WFH environment. If people are bad at giving clear & concise answers, the problem isn't WFH, its that their writing and communication skills aren't actually that good. I feel though that in person, people get to lean on being funny, nice, etc. but in a remote environment clear & concise communication is required or else people get ignored or they waste a bunch of time. Their lack of communication skills and potentially technical skills are more obvious in a remote environment due to this. The people who could get things done didn't stop once WFH started, it was the people who were already pretty "meh" who's issues got amplified during covid.
Our discussions have been much more focused and to the point. Primarily because interrupting thoughts and comments are often done on the chat rather than being vocalized. Things like "where can I find X", or "What does Y refer to?" can be answered async with the meeting.
> easy to zone out or get disengaged during the discussion
To be fair, this true of almost all work meetings. Extra points if nobody asks for your input the whole meeting, and extra points for meetings over an hour.
You shouldn't go to meetings unless you know what it is you are expected to contribute. Actively ask for clarification if it's not clear and decline meetings if necessary.
I have the opposite experience (our team is doing better remote), but the problem appears to be with corporations making blanket decisions for everyone. They shouldn't.
I was going to write "corporations trust us to make the right decisions to run our service, they should trust us to make the right decisions about where to work", but these two things are one and the same.
So your team believes they work better in an office: your team works in an office. The team next door believes they do better at home: that team works from home. Managers want to do the day-long promotion meetings in an office, all the managers head to the office that day.
I have the same experience. I estimate around 80-90% of my work can be done fully remotely, but the remainder requires careful communication and planning and it's often best done face to face. Real whiteboards are simply better. Gesticulation is more important than people seem to think. We have scientists in labs and there's simply no way we'd get the info we need without stepping into the labs and watching them work.
I fully believe that some software can be developed 100% remotely (you only need to look at all the free/open source software as evidence for this). But for the kind I do, I can't imagine the developers being fully remote. We need to be local enough to be physically present at least every now and then. Some people are calling this a "hybrid" approach. We predominantly work remotely, but we live nearby.
What seems absurd is expecting people to be in the office 100% of the time for the maybe 10% that would benefit from it. I don't ever want to go back to a 100% office job. I'm so glad COVID happened.
"Fearful of losing one more junior employee in what has become a tight job market, Mr. Singer has allowed a young colleague to work from home one day a week with an understanding that they would revisit the issue in the future."
One day a week! Yeah, that'll retain 'em for sure.
The FANG I'm at offered us a whole two days per week..! I was blown away by the complete tone deaf hubris.
The WFH topic is bafflingly being met by the exact same old talking points as before (e.g. "slippery slope") -- as though the last year and a half didn't just happen.
Something'll give or, welp... time to begrudgingly start leetcoding to shake off the interview dust.
Maybe a majority of big tech. Following is from quick news searches. Those in the know please correct if you want and if you're allowed.
Facebook: local employees are expected in the office "at least half the time." But Zuckerberg is quoted elsewhere as saying he thinks a majority of the workforce will eventually be remote. Remote pay is adjusted. Do not know if employees or teams can just arbitrarily choose that setup.
Apple: 3 days in the office (postponed 1 month)
Amazon: 3 days in, 2 days at home as "baseline."
Netflix: 9/2020 articles suggested bringing everyone back full time. Hastings was quoted then as being against home/remote including a joke that he though the RTO deadline should be "12 hours after a vaccine is approved," with the serious followup thought to be after a majority of their employees were vaccinated. That was a year ago and things are more relaxed now; it sounds like it will be voluntary in the near future.
Google: "hybrid" 3 days in, 2 at home for local employees. Some fraction of the workforce will be remote.
Extending to honorary FAANGUM:
Uber: 3 days in, 2 at home
Microsoft: different "hybrid." Microsoft seems to be the only one of the group to have committed to generally allow employees to choose?
reminder those may all be outdated, this was a very quick search. Aside from Apple all the articles were written pre-Delta in the US.
I joined MSFT as a manager 18 months ago, and honestly think their remote policy is one of the better ones out there.
Up to 50% remote time with no approval, up to 100% with manager approval. This of course is modulo legal / right to work if you’re moving countries.
I’m not in the US and we’re trying to hire a lot of SWEs right now, and really trying to leverage this for our hiring.
I only have a small number of teams, but we’ve all been remote since April of last year and it has been working well, though I think people are keen to get back to the office for the social aspect.
Those that wanted full remote have already gone that path.
Do you have any advice on applying to msft? I'd love to work for them due to their products and now even more so due to their apparent support for fully remote work.
I worked in a finance company for a while and told my manager I was finding it difficult to concentrate at work. A year or so before the company had got rid of all small offices and gone 100% hotdesking. Meetings were done almost exclusively remotely via Skype, but everyone had to be sitting at a desk to be part of it. I would often find myself surrounded on all sides by 3-4 people all on different calls. We already had VPN set up and when I was ill I ended up working from home one day. Suddenly I remembered what it was like to actually achieve something at work. I had done more in one day at home than a month in the office.
I explained this to my boss the best I could and he said I could work from home one day per week on a provisional basis. I left shortly after.
Even when you enjoy your job, office work on the whole isn't that glamorous. It's why you often hear non-office workers say things like "I'd hate to spend all day sitting in front of a computer!".
I would guess that many office workers choose these types of jobs in large part because these jobs typically offer good pay and stability.
Companies try to jazz up these jobs by offering workplace perks (free food, gyms, snacks, etc.), but now the biggest perk they can provide is the freedom to live where you want. Now that a lot of people have had a taste for it, it's not a surprise that many value this perk far more than generic office perks. Especially young people who don't already have roots where the office is.
They would have to explain in great detail how their amazing culture is worth exchanging 5-10 hours per week of living my life with 5-10 hours per week of a lonely, expensive and often-times miserable commute.
It's having to live in places like New York City. It's not worth it anymore. Real estate ownership is priced out of reach as is a comfortable quality of life that can weather medium-term economic uncertainties.
I'm not so sure all those foosball tables and one beer on Friday afternoons make up for spending as much as a cumulative 10 hours per 5-day work week commuting.
Any job that doesn't allow full-time wfh has a horrible work culture by my standards. This isn't even an age thing but just a complete lack of understanding just how much some of us hate working in an office.
This man's world was blown open when he found that employees aren't actually their friends, "culture" is generally tolerated rather than enjoyed, and people only show up because they're paid
If you actually had a strong culture that mattered to your workers, they would know what they were missing, and they would want it back. If they don't want it back, your culture isn't worth what you think it is.
The people quoted just seem to want butts in seats so they can feel important. Very few arguments of substance were given aside from “if they dont get face time with their bosses cough me then they may not get promoted and might get fired because I am a power tripping loser whose entire identity is being a manager
Or for people like me, wfh will be a perk that actually attracts us, whereas lunches and nap rooms are worthless at best (I prefer making my own food and having a healthy sleep routine) or red flags at worst (too much time in office).
My ideal office is how my favorite job was: deserted around 4:55pm, managers and directors included. 2 hour lunches not uncommon. Work-life balance always the primary focus. Unfortunately my ideal job includes never going into an office, so I'll have to continue looking elsewhere.
FWIW, employers that provide free lunch do so partly because of the tax efficiency. The IRS allows certain perks to be provided on-site "for the convenience of the employer". This argument would not apply for at-home workers, so the stipend would have to be included in the employee's income. Not a dealbreaker, but it does affect the calculus.
As usual, depends on location. In France employers bigger than some numbers are mandated to provide some lunch allowance in specific vouchers/cards usable for grocery shopping/restaurants/etc. OR at least a partially covered cantine.
There's no specific provision for WFH, so we still get lunch allowance ( 9.80€/day, iirc the minimum is around 6.50), which is a bit hard to use when you no longer go to a restaurant every day.
> - I'm not constantly surrounded by free junk food.
I worked for a while in a "normie" office (not a tech company) and I was blown away by the amount of junk food people ate. In some areas each row of desks had piles of junk food at the ends and there would constantly be cake for people's birthdays etc.
Other places I've seen offer a "fully stocked" kitchen (read, junk food) as a perk. Why the hell would I want a constant supply of crap I can easily afford to buy but don't because it's unhealthy? I consider myself to have pretty decent self control, but some people don't and it's like offering crack to an addict. I don't even agree with vending machines at work.
> Other places I've seen offer a "fully stocked" kitchen (read, junk food) as a perk. Why the hell would I want a constant supply of crap I can easily afford to buy but don't because it's unhealthy? I consider myself to have pretty decent self control, but some people don't and it's like offering crack to an addict.
I agree completely. I've never understood why people making $200-300k are so impressed by food, as if they're living on a remote island. I could understand if it was some kind of chef service where you can request any recipe, but as it is I'd rather work in an office that has no food or private offices so I can keep the noises, smells, and sights out.
At the end of the day, from a macro perspective, it's going to come down to the "war for talent".
Businesses with the best talent, over time, win; those without, lose. As so, this is the most pertinent part of the article:
"As much as Mr. Gross wants people back at his ad agency, he is worried about retaining young talent at a time when churn is increasing."
At the end of the day workers do have the power here. If young people decide it matters businesses will adjust or die.
From a personal perspective, for me, it came down to money. I like living in NYC, but not enough to pay 3x for everything. Right now I pay $60 p/h for a personal boxing trainer. In NYC, I was paying $150. My kids want a backyard. Stuff like that.
I'm also a little worried about finance. The prestige there is lowering. They used to get the best students in the class. Now those students go to tech companies and they are getting the 4th, 5th, and 6th best students in the class. If they stick people in cubicles, eventually that's going to lower to 10th, and then we will have C students making trillion dollar bets with our financial system. Only half joking.
This is the key point for me. Too many people seem to think that only workers should adapt for companies, and that the labor market exists to compete for the jobs that are bestowed on them. This is evident in the whole "no one wants to work any more! What a bunch of lazy [millenials|zoomers|derogative of choice]". Naw dude, they just don't want work for you, for peanuts, with no benefits or healthcare, in the middle of a deadly pandemic. They're not lazy, they're maximizing value for their shareholders too, in this case themselves. Covid has made a lot of people realize that the shit they had to take before was not a great deal for them, and they want something better.
At my office they want us to come back for social reasons, but nobody has time to socialize because we're always so backed up with tickets. Frankly it's easier to work overtime from home.
Unfortunately, like everything unbalanced in life, things will bounce back the other way around and not for the better.
Instead of trying to find a middle ground which is acceptable on both side, I fear the response will be to accelerate remote working outsourcing to cheaper countries (I.e. “why bend to these whiny brats if I end up with remote workers, might as well get those at a fraction of the cost, that won’t complain”). So the only nice position that will remain local will be top talent and people managing that outsourcing.
Top talent won’t be hit too much but I fear anything below will soon or later, and I see too many average DEvs thinking they are untouchable. They haven’t lived through an economic crisis yet and living pay by pay. I don’t see how this will end well in a few years from now.
I get these articles coming out a month ago, but given the rise of delta variant and the strong uptick in COVID cases in this past month [1], how do companies justify or even consider asking employees back into the office? This is an article from today; that seems really weird to me.
My employer has made 2 days a week in the office mandatory this week. I've already decided that if it creeps up to 3 days, I'll be out of there and looking for a new job, probably remote. It's not that I don't like being in the office, but that my commute is 1h30m in each direction. Doing that twice a day is exhausting and steals precious hours of my day away.
At one point, I had a 90+ minute commute maybe half the time. I could often do it by train which made it almost tolerable but almost certainly not over the long term.
At one point I commuted 90 to 120 minutes or more each way. I managed to survive it for about a year and a half or so and it was absolutely the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I don't know how people can do longer commutes or for a longer period of their life than me. I would recommend anybody to keep a hard cap of 1h each way and only if it's absolutely necessary. Today I'd rather work for 50k and a 30m commute than a 2h commute for 200k
Companies who want to retain talent would be wise to let people work from home full time. Some people do not enjoy culture-building activities. Frankly, to me they seem absurd.
I was happy to hear one of our recent new grads negotiated for full time WFH. Either way I would be fully remote from them -- I'm just glad to see the younger generation willing to fight for it.
One cause I don’t see listed in these discussions but I’d be willing to bet is extremely common - the company signed long (10+ year) leases on commercial real estate and nobody wants to take those leases over, so they expect people to come back to justify their sunk cost.
Even in a biological lab setting, in the past few weeks my productivity has stalled out after going back. Now I have to smile and nod 6-8 hours a day, then go home and actually do my work.
How does it work in a lab? A lot of what I did at the bench was actually at the bench and I needed to be physically present to pipette stuff or move cultures around.
We tended to work weird, utterly flexible hours, though, since the pace was dictated by the experiments. Thirty six hours of time points every two hours, sleeping on the couch in the break room, and just not showing up the next day. Leaving a dinner party at 10PM to stop by the lab and deal with a culture before going to bed. Disappearing to take a walk for two hours in the middle of the day because because there was a 6AM time point and a 6PM time point.
Yeah, I gladly go when I need to physically manipulate stuff. But, my role has shifted into data analyst, which involves a lot of nights with zero sleep nowadays since I’m using my own time for computational methods development.
This trend has made recruiting so easy. We started asking our top performers for referrals. We pay whatever we paid in Palo Alto. It's a constant stream of high quality resumes.
> “As a manager, it’s really hard to get cohesion and collegiality without being together on a regular basis, and it’s difficult to mentor without being in the same place,” Mr. Singer said.
This seems easily disproven by the last 18 months of high productivity and team function.
I find mentorship much easier as I accept more mentorship requests because zoom is less time consuming and have found more of my requests get accepted.
I am a Senior SRE at a FAANG and part of my job is mentoring junior members on the team. In my experience being remote and having tools has made mentoring easier. Between slack and zoom they get to talk to me and I get to send them relevant info that they can look back on for reference.
Also in situations where I may need to show something to a couple people, I have the option to record it. This allows for others to watch who couldn't attend and it can be reference for new members.
When in the office, someone stopping by or having me come to their desk was awkward and there was usually no paper trail to reference.
If I were to go back to the office I would continue mentoring this way as the tools help facilitate the sessions better than sitting at their desk talking to them.
> When in the office, someone stopping by or having me come to their desk was awkward and there was usually no paper trail to reference.
Just in general what I noticed about remote is that my engineering colleagues are much more easily reachable. I remember years ago at a place where I had to chase a colleague for months to mentor me about a certain topic - despite going to lunch together almost every other day. Ironically in the remote setting most of the people are even in for a synchronous call/quick screen share. What I also like is having to take much less notes.
That is my experience as well. I will usually drop what I am working on to help mentor or assist someone having problems right away. It is quick to connect and the problem is occurring right then. It basically cuts the transaction time in half compared to the in person version.
I think I’m in the minority, I really miss working in a collocated team. I previously had a 30 minute bike commute, enjoyed having lunch with colleagues and solving problems together in person. Zoom and Slack will never be as good for me, I feel less connection with remote colleagues. I really hope WFH doesn’t become the default in all tech jobs
I feel like a lot of people are not taking into account that there should be way better options than zoom/slack, we should have fully immersive 3d video, screens, camera's, such that you wouldn't miss face 2 face interactions at all. That would change a lot of minds, and the technology doesn't seem far off.
Let's hope 4 day work weeks are next. Even if a "10/4" (which many already do) or lower comp.
Two days are not enough to decompress, take care of the personal chore backlog, and still have hobbies. Especially if you have ADHD, dependents, or other complications.
Just call 4 days per week "full time". It's no more arbitrary than 5 days a week, but it would dramatically improve the lives of almost all working people.
I get it, I was just pointing out that working fewer hours (nominally) for less pay has been an option for at least decades. It's not something to 'hope' is 'next', it's just something to do if it's what one wants.
