The issue is that the employees that do love hybrid/on-site also have to force everyone else to become hybrid - otherwise, their hybrid days become "video meetings but in a different building".
That hasn't been my experience. Given the option, most the people-needers congregate at work, while the slightly more introverted types work from home.
Its not the screens during meetings that bother the extraverted ones, it's the lack of people nearby which sets the temperature of their workday.
> it's the lack of people nearby which sets the temperature of their workday.
This is what bothers me, why should I lose an hour+ of MY day because some people like the feeling of others around them. I don't get that time back, I don't get the money for the wear and tear on my vehicle, all so someone feels warm and cozy, unrelated to the actual productivity of the work.
Employers love to treat employees as numbers, but when employees say "Hey I'm a number, look at my productivity, don't make me participate in these rituals", people act like its childish.
I don't owe anything to my employer, because they don't owe me anything except the legal compensation for the work.
The argument is that your team’s quality of work, whether you like it or not, suffers without some amount of human interaction. You need to address that, not just parrot the personal preference to be a good little Jira closing productive remote cog and not interact with anybody at all. Not that I don't agree that companies should do a better job understanding individual productivity, but that’s not the argument.
For software, at least, whole 8-figure-equivalent software projects have been carried from ideation to delivery & maintenance, largely overseen by software developers, not managers, mostly over email and IRC (hey, look, human interaction!).
If professional managers with the power of economic incentives behind them can't match that with a remote team, holy fuck, they're terrible at their jobs, literally providing negative value.
Citing examples of successful remote projects doesn't address the argument. They're just examples. I can also say that entire multi-billion dollar companies have been built on the foundation of offices and in-person collaboration. So what?
There are clearly preferences for both styles. Choose the style you want and work at a place that can accommodate. No need to force everything to be one way or another. Why is that such a hard concept?
Right, but I was addressing the post I was responding to, not this stuff. All I needed to do for that was to demonstrate that building software products remotely with pretty damn good efficiency and effectiveness isn't actually all that hard, and I think the examples (what do you want, a law of physics?) are abundant enough to prove that pretty decisively.
In an office probably works fine too, sure, but I don't think remote needs to prove anything, in the software world. It's proven. It's very proven. Managers that can't do better than some developers self-organizing online, with the same or better tools and a budget, must be pretty bad at what they do. I'm not making the point that some of them evidently find that incredibly difficult and even impossible, they are, which seems to me like telling on themselves. Guess they're bad at their job, should let a developer do it. It's pretty clearly not rocket science or something that requires some kind of expert, since it keeps being done over and over by people who aren't professional managers. Seems to just require someone halfway competent.
Nobody has to prove anything, that's my entire point. Both stances are valid and it's a company's leadership's decision how to handle their employees and how to structure their operations.
So if a company says, "we prefer a hybrid work model", then shouting out "but look fully remote projects can work as is evidenced by all these successful ones" simply doesn't matter.
My comment (that you were responding to) was explaining that apparently there are leaders who have seen a difference in product quality, velocity, collaboration, team morale, what have you, between fully remote and pre-covid in-office work styles. Presumably they believe that bringing people together is best for their company/product/team. You simply can't argue with that, at least not generally, since it's a valid viewpoint.
Rhetorically the existence of anecdotes to the contrary does not invalidate an argument/position/viewpoint.
Rate of Jira tickets closed does not equate to "quality product". It (optimistically) means "lots of work done". The numbers you're looking for would come from user product feedback and bug reports, but it also comes subjectively from the product owner/leader's assessment of the product's performance. That's the nuance that leadership deals with every day and which we often overlook as good little Jira closing robots.
So this is all just your opinion stated as fact?
Your total lack of structural critique and reliance on relativist takes makes me wonder what your point is? Is it “do what your employer wants you to do?”
This whole topic is a relative subjective thing. If leadership/management feels like their teams' or product's performance is not what they need under whatever model they use currently, then they are at liberty to adopt whatever other model they think will make them more successful. If they choose wrong then boo hoo they failed. That's not an opinion, that's just how things work. Add liberty to dictate your own work location and collaboration habits regardless of your employment contract to the constitution if you disagree (not saying I wouldn't support that lol).
There are valid anecdotes from people being more productive working remote. And there are valid anecdotes from people feeling like remote work has take a toll on their mental health and productivity and ability to collaboratively solve problems. And there are valid anecdotes from people who feel like a balanced hybrid model is exactly what they need. And there's even data that shows hybrid and remote work does improve productivity.
The only opinion I've state as fact is the observation that there does not seem to be one perfect solution for every person and situation and team out there. The only opinion I've truly state is that people should consider compromising on their work requirements because it's silly to rehash an unresolvable argument about which work style is the ultimate global best, ad nauseam.
If I were in charge of this topic at a large company, I do believe this is one of those "every scenario is a bit different" situations and I'd advise managers to work with their teams to make the right call. But I'm not so who cares.
> otherwise, their hybrid days become "video meetings but in a different building".
The places that I and my friends worked at pre-pandemic were already like this. Meetings were held via videoconferencing even though everyone was in the office, people mostly interacted with each via chat and email, etc.
Same, and it was so dumb. The startup I worked for had an awesome office culture, with snacks, food deliveries, etc. Everybody was in the office unless and people stayed home if they needed to for something. When we got acquired by an older more corporate co, the office was terrible. Nicer looking, but white noise machines, cubicles (roomy and fancy, but still cubicles). The office was out of the way so people started wfh 2 days a week. I was working remotely from the office and ended up asking to go full remote. Also the coffee went from awesome to terrible.
It’s not hybrid vs remote. It’s fully onsite vs fully remote. Hybrid policies are a compromise that aim to give both sides ground, while acknowledging that it’s not the perfect outcome for either. To say “hybrid is forcing me back into the office when I want none of it and screw those people who want to talk to me face to face” is wholly and completely the juvenile response that indicates you truly don't understand the concept of a compromise whatsoever.
Hybrid, even 1 day a week, is still a huge blow to any WFH people who want to WFH for the benefit of living wherever they want. With hybrid, you still need to live within an hour of your office, and living anything more than 1.5 hours out is untenable for most people (which usually puts you living in the middle of nowhere anyways, which isn't the WFH goal), not to mention how most cities' suburbs continue to have 10% YoY housing cost increases.
You should 100% present the economics of the situation to your manager and advocate for your needs. Then it's a conversation between you and the company whether or not you can perform your role in a fully remote capacity, and whether or not they want to compensate you differently to have you in the office. Money tends cut out BS pretty quick.
Hybrid, even one day a week, is a compromise that enables the vast majority of what the RTO people want and almost nothing the WFH people want. Dress it up anyway you want, but there's a reason why so many recruiters hide hybrid behind the remote label until very late in the hiring process. Hybrid is simply unable to attract people who want WFH but is a favorite "we gave you 1% and we get 99%" compromise of the forced faux friends camp. No matter how many bottles of pretty sprinkles you put on a turd, it's still a turd.
That’s hyperbolic bullshit. Here I was thinking that WFH people didn't want to commute unnecessarily into the office, be able to work undistracted at home in their flow state, be home to meet the handyman in the afternoon if needed or do an errand that has to happen during business hours, eat lunch with their kids, etc. How does 1 day a week in the office kill all that, exactly?
The only thing 1 day a week RTO kills is the “work from Bozeman” camp, which affords zero to people who want to collab in person.
> The only thing 1 day a week RTO kills is the “work from Bozeman” camp, which affords zero to people who want to collab in person.
No I didn't. That's called a remote job not WFH. If work from wherever the fuck I want is important to you then go work for a remote company or convince the one you work at that your roll can be performed remote, from wherever the fuck you want. Nobody is arguing against that.
How does that work when I need to employ you to come weld two pieces of metal together in the factory I own, or take care of the sick patient in a bed in my hospital? You clearly haven't given a fraction of a second’s thought to this topic you’re just blurting out pro-100%-remote-work quips.
Is this a joke response? The law, as it does now for other cases, would differentiate work that can be done remotely and work that can be done on site.
Did you think my suggestion meant that e.g. waiters and sailors would also work from home?
>You clearly haven't given a fraction of a second’s thought to this topic
How would the law distinguish what jobs can and can't be done remotely? It's not objective. You've got to be kidding me if you think the law can tell a business whether an employee can perform their duties remotely or not... LOL I'm trying to even imagine the wording... please provide some example prose.
Anyway... you're deeply gravely missing the entire nuance: management/leadership at Google is arguing that "the job" of a general employee expected to be a collaborative team member can't be done completely remotely to a quality level or at a velocity that is acceptable for their business. Sure there are exceptions that the business decides are okay, like that ops guy working 3rd shift from Seychelles who isn't building product and closes all his incidents in an acceptable time window that meets SLAs, he's allowed. But they are exceptions, not the rule.
>How would the law distinguish what jobs can and can't be done remotely? It's not objective.
The law doesn't just handle objectively measurable things. It's not a computer algorithm, and it has to apply to society, where things are not always black and white. So, the law has differentiated such things since the dawn of man, it's nothing new. Examples of such cases would be obscenity laws, defamation laws, fair use judgements, personal/psychological damage compensation, etc, where there are general legal guidelines and court/jury judgment if further required. There are tons of other such examples in all legal domains.
>You've got to be kidding me if you think the law can tell a business whether an employee can perform their duties remotely or not... LOL I'm trying to even imagine the wording... please provide some example prose.
The juvenile "LOL" approach isn't very conducive to proper conversation. Just saying.
In any case, the law could give general guidelines, and also list some unambiguous remote-capable job roles, and the rest could be left to per industry evaluation, and, if it comes to that, case law.
"In order to promote workplace flexibility and adaptability in the modern economy, this law establishes a distinction between remote-capable jobs and location-dependent jobs. Remote-capable jobs are those positions that can be performed effectively and efficiently without the physical presence of the employee at a specific worksite. Such jobs may include roles in software development, content creation, customer service, and other knowledge-based occupations. On the other hand, location-dependent jobs are those roles that necessitate the employee's physical presence at a designated workplace due to the nature of the tasks involved, such as healthcare professionals, emergency responders, construction workers, and other hands-on occupations. Employers shall assess job functions and determine the suitability of remote work based on factors such as operational requirements, employee productivity, and the preservation of essential services. This law aims to facilitate remote work opportunities while ensuring that critical functions requiring local presence are duly addressed."
>management/leadership at Google is arguing that "the job" of a general employee expected to be a collaborative team member can't be done completely remotely to a quality level or at a velocity that is acceptable for their business.
They can argue whatever they want.
If employers were left on their own devices they'd also argue that people should work 12 hours a day, that paid overtime is detrimental to their business, that child labour is fine, that their business don't need to provide safety standards and work accidents should be pinned into the workers being "careless", that they don't need to hire women in executive roles because they're less competent and have impaired judgment "once a month", and a whole lot more.
In fact, they have argued, and practiced all of the above, before labour laws (that they fought against vehemently), had them begrudgingly accept them.
What is "acceptable for their business", based on their own judgement, shouldn't constrain what is accetaptable or even best practice for society, the environment, and so on.
No one but management is forcing anyone to do anything. If I do well in person, then as a colleague I need to respect that other people might do well remote, and vice versa.
Sure, but these hybrid policies aren't just the result of management wanting to see busybodies typing, but people that still bother to come into the office making small talk like "yeah it's always empty" or "that onsite day was nice, wish my team was here more often". They likely still respect everyone's preference, but management needs to keep everyone happy, so hybrid is the compromise and it allows management to justify their multiple-million-dollar commercial real-estate investments.
That’s why hybrid policies represent a compromise. If you’re more than 2 years old you understand the meaning of compromise. Nobody get’s exactly what they want, but the outcome aims to please both sides by offering affordances in both directions.
Sorry that wasn't meant to be directed at you. I was responding to the thread of discussion. I think we agree, and I was just reiterating that because there are two sides people need to compromise. I was also expressing frustration that there are still people chiming in to the tune of "well I want to be at home all day every day and hybrid is bad for me so RTO and anybody who supports it is full of shit" without any ability to, well, compromise.
