> Or you are in the subset of people that prefer working in-office. They aren't nonexistent, although that's frequently assumed on this site.
And who don't work for an employer who, simultaneous with RTO, is working to make in-office work a shit experience.
Hot-desking* in an open-office space, while you Zoom with your remote teammates based in a different office? WHO WOULDN'T WANT THAT?
* Now euphemized as "hoteling."
I actually like working in-office, but FFS, at least give me a cube with some storage, open desktop space, 3 or 4 walls that are taller than I am when sitting (and preferably when standing) that's in the same building with my team.
"Hoteling" is an awesome euphemism. Give me a desk that's depressingly impersonal, wasn't cleaned very well after its previous occupant left, and is always three degrees too cold. (At least there's free breakfast, right?)
Just FYI, I was a consultant for Deloitte in the early 2000's in Boston and they called it that even then, because consultants frequently travel and were out of the office anyway, so the incentive of paying for less under-utilized office space was already there.
And, heh, if you didn't reserve a desk in time then you basically got stuck in the hallway on a "floater" terminal with a lot of foot-traffic behind you
That is exactly the conundrum. Why would a hybrid team be in the office at the same time? Most likely, only if there’s a requirement to be there at that time. So hybrid doesn’t really work either.
I'm one of those who are most certainly more productive in-office (learned the hard way and the soft way via various work experiences). The reasons don't matter, but we are a significant minority.
The problem is that you can't have a discriminatory work policy. If for example you make a rule that "if you are considered productive, you can work more days from home; if you are considered to be becoming less productive, then you must come to the office more," then a few things happen, first and foremost being that people who are visibly in the office more are perceived as slackers, which can be a self-fulfilling belief, and the people who are out of the office more are "primadonnas" or "boss bootlickers". All of this creating more tension, as the "productive mostly from-home'ers" are also less likely to get promoted, etc. Basically there are a bunch of knock-on effects from treating employees differently in this capacity.
I have a friend who had hard data showing he was more productive when he was WFH and he still ended up having to RTO after covid lockdowns. I'm sure this wasn't a decision made lightly by management.
There's always the option of finding a 100% WFH company where they basically don't hire (or end up retaining) anyone with any ADHD =) and where those highly self-disciplined folks can go to thrive. But a large company like Blizzard won't be it.
I almost want to apologize to the people who are more productive when 100% WFH for having to comply with RTO policies for the sake of people like me. People like me are grateful for your sacrifice.
a significant factor in choosing my current role was that it was 100% on-site. Of course, this comes with a significant amount of nice amenities like catered lunch, free beverages/snacks, a gym, etc. It's also close to where I live. I understand people's reasoning for wanting to WFH, and they are valid, but just wanted to voice there is a subset that don't prefer this way (or thrive when WFH, I am like you, I am much less productive at home).
At the risk of getting downvoted I do think there's another subset of people who are convinced they are more productive WFH but actually aren't. Or, know they aren't, but don't care. I think this realization is what sparks these draconian RTO policies by upper management.
> At the risk of getting downvoted I do think there's another subset of people who are convinced they are more productive WFH but actually aren't. Or, know they aren't, but don't care. I think this realization is what sparks these draconian RTO policies by upper management.
Part of it may be that working on-site is still culturally considered the default, and WFH an exception. This creates an interesting asymmetry: if you're less productive at home than in the office, then obviously you should work from the office; if you're less productive in the office than at home... then you're a bad employee and should be let go.
> They aren't nonexistent, although that's frequently assumed on this site.
It seems to me that those who want to return to offices are a bit like the target market for the iPhone Mini: a very vocal minority.
And they are a minority indeed [0]. In fact, if the average HN poster was a white male, the RTO crowd would be overrepresented and thus it would explain that, in each one of these debates, there is always a good bunch claiming that in person office work is great.
> It seems to me that those who want to return to offices are a bit like the target market for the iPhone Mini: a very vocal minority.
YMMV. It seems to me that "zealots" on either spectrum (fully remote or fully office) are vocal minorities. Most of the people seem to prefer hybrid, where they get to go to office a few days a week and spend time WFH a few days.
HN crowd seems to have a lot of vocal proponents of fully-remote work.
> Most of the people seem to prefer hybrid, where they get to go to office a few days a week and spend time WFH a few days.
The numbers given don't seem to back that up.
Either way, the hybrid model is also polarizing, as it proves ineffective over time when people go to the office in non overlapping days, effectively turning going to the office into the same experience as working from home, just away from it.
While hybrid works for me, only fully-remote enables you to move far away from the office and, potentially, significantly improve your quality of life. I totally get why people feel so strongly about it.
My annecdata is that I feel far more productive (concentrated) at home, but going in 1-2 times a week is very important for incidental communication that can have important consequences. I currently manage a fully remote intern, but we have him come ~ two days every month. So far this seems to work.
They're not non-existent, I work with a few myself. But generally I've found that they're single, live by themselves, and enjoy the social interactions of meeting coworkers in person. (Of course, there will be exceptions to this).
I dont think you can generalise this way, its is also dependent on where you are living or what your commute looks like.
As an example, right now I am living and working in Amsterdam. My commute is 10 minutes by bike or 25min walk. I generally prefer to work in the office since I like the free exercise, context switch, and my office is also nice. However if my commute was longer than 60 mins, and in a car or public transport, I would want to work remotely.
Same. I’ve been working remotely for 23 years. I love working in an office when I get the opportunity to. The context switch is what I miss the most. It’s a 30 minute bike commute downtown for me. I had a chance to work in an office downtown several years ago and it was one of my favorite experiences.
And before anyone asks, yes, happily married, kids at home, excellent home office, healthy social life.
Great, but it's a pretty isolating idea that you should spend all your time with the same few people. It's nice and healthy to context-switch and spend some time around different people.
Pointing out that this isn't OP -- took me a minute, I was confused by the tone switch from 'there's nuance here and its conditional based on current circumstances' to chiding of a position no ones advanced.
And I'm very much RTO crew! Who is calm about it because of exactly that conditionality on current circumstances.
Why is it not possible? There have been countless times where co-workers have booked in time on the calendar (for observability for the team) to meet up with a friend for lunch, or to even meet up after work and support local businesses around their home.
Re: "1 on 1s walking around the block and seeing this cool cafe that closes at 2pm?"
That does sound nice. All of my in office jobs were sitting at my desk staring at a computer for 8 hours. No one was walking around the block. :-) But that was over ten years ago.
They edited to make it less confusing / sarcastic, tl;dr they're lecturing people, with a family, who don't want to RTO, who think you only need to socialize with family
Married, my wife also works a demanding career, and we have 3 kids and 2 dogs.
I've been part-time remote since ~2012, full-time since 2016. I've recently taken a hybrid role. I really, really enjoy going into the office twice a week these days. The change of scenery is helping my brain. Plus, my kids preschool/daycare is equidistant from our home and the office, so it's not actually adding any measurable commuting time to my life. My daily commute is ~40 minutes in total regardless of where I sit my ass down to work.
I'm fortunate that my life is set up this way but I know from going into the office twice a week for months now that I'm not alone, most of my colleagues are in similar situations.
I'm all of those things - and /much/ prefer working from home. If I was made to RTO - even one day a week - I would find another job that was 100% remote.
From the ones I know and myself, it more about where they want to life. If I would be living in the suburbs with a long commute, I'd definitely insist on working remote only. But since we are living around 10-20 minutes from the office by bike or public transport anyway, I enjoy the social interactions with coworkers a couple times a week, working from home the rest of the time.
That said, I'd be perfectly happy to go fully remote as well. Wouldn't come to my mind to advocate that others to have to go to the office, just because I enjoy it once in a while.
That's not my experience - but then I work in quite a different line of work (investing) to the majority here. My experience is there isn't really any correlation between age, home situation, etc and desire to work in the office. Most people I work with (of all levels of seniority) seem to be happy with a hybrid setup (which probably averages out over the year at 1-2 days per week WFH, 3-4 days in office or work travel). In fact that's what we naturally did ourselves before there were any rules set from above.
I assume the statement was geared towards those who do not prefer working in-office. No need to force RTO for those willing to (or already did) return to the office.
If you have a group that consists of four home office warriors and one office worker (and assume they're all the best of the best) you still either have an office they go to or you don't, and if one person is alone in the office, what is the real point?
I think the end is going to mash out, but the real underlying problem that nobody wants to directly address is managers know who they'd be fine with working from home, and those who they are not so fine with (and it could all be entirely legitimate). Since they can't discriminate, they just slam to the lowest common denominator.
I can't speak for anyone but myself, I can only speculate. Maybe the lone office warrior wants to get away from noisy construction at home, family, etc.?
I know we have been WFH since March 2020, and we're _just_ starting to talk about RTO. No one wants to, but the state institution we work for is about to demand it. We have plenty of low performers that may work better (or, with some of them, actually work) being in the office. For our team, that would come at a significant disadvantage for those who _can_ work remote who now have to juggle managing the lower performers.
Obviously, it'd be easy to let go of the low performers and replace with more solid people, but being a state employee makes that somewhat difficult (HR, salaries, etc).
I know more than a few extremely skilled engineers who'd leave if their team wasn't local, simply because they hate doing everything over virtual meetings.
No matter how much I you puff up about the advantages, most workers will choose cutting their commute to zero with the lost costs/ time wasted as a net positive. The calculation on workers remote / local benefits and costs were always there, but they're certainly more heavily scrutinized now. So sure those guys will find the few willing to come to office while the rest just make more staying at home. Enjoy!
I love working on site. I wish my preferred employers would pick up and move to my comfortable suburb near my family and friends. They won't. Why did we ever allow that to become choice and why did we ever create a culture where the "obvious" answer was to move away for decades?
I'm glad I left to get world class experience, and I'm glad I'm back to stay.
So I expect young people will do what I did and move on site.
Yeah that line was a bit of a daft generalisation not helping the rest of the argument. Different strokes for different folks, and there are definitely strengths to on site that full time remote can't match (remote has its own strengths), especially team cohesion - or we might as well all be off shore contractors.
Yeah I liked the office when I actually had an office but during Covid they got us out of our offices and when we returned put us in cube farms. It sucks ass.
The issue is the cost of getting to work, and even to live near work.
Just getting to work is a significant expense, parking, having a vehicle that's good enough to commute in, insured for commuting, and always repaired before the next weekday, it adds up.
When the pandemic kicked off WFH, I suddenly found myself with an extra $10,000 or so in my pocket each year.
Then I moved away from work, which allowed me to go from renter to homeowner (with rental income that helped me get approved). My monthly COL is lower, and between paying my mortgage and home appreciation, I've accumulated $300,000-$400,000 in equity over 4 years.
Back in town, I'd still be a renter hopelessly saving up for an apartment with maybe 10-20% of my current net worth.
tldr: My office was actually pretty nice, but not having to physically live near or get to it, has put me in a dramatically higher socio-economic class.
> The issue is the cost of getting to work, and even to live near work.
It's such an amazing own goal that as municipal politicians overly pandered to the nimby attitudes of established wealthy homeowners, and disallowed any and all new housing in desirable near downtown areas, they induced a requirement for massive, shitty commutes, which people are now naturally and smartly abandoning for WFH as soon as they can, thus destroying the economies of said cities' downtowns.
All of it could have been avoided if cities actually let housing be built.
I still often go into the office purely for the enjoyment of a pleasant and healthy 15 minute bike ride into work. I recognize however that most colleagues do not have that privilege of a short commute, and I understand completely why they'd rather stay home.
> All of it could have been avoided if cities actually let housing be built.
Perhaps to some extent, but the type of housing in cities is mostly restricted to apartments, which is not satisfying for everyone, especially those that prefer living outside the city.
Or you are in the subset of people that prefer working in-office. They aren't nonexistent, although that's frequently assumed on this site.