Ask HN: Is Hybrid Working a Ruse?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31122002

by tropicalfruit • 4 years ago

139 248 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

We've been asked to return to the office for two days a week "mandatory".

I'm convinced that this is just the first part of a plan to eventually have people working 5 days in office again.

The reason I am convinced is because there is no clear value proposition to even being in office two days "mandatory", which tells me that it is not really a gesture of flexibility but rather of temporary appeasement.

What do you think?

incomingpain3• 4 years ago

How many buildings are empty right now? Selling your large corporate building isn't going to go well. Nobody wants it because their workers dont want to be in the office anymore.

But then again maintenance, utilities, toilet paper, sickness, taxes, etc are all burning a hole in their pocket. So better to force people back to the office?

Worse yet, any big corp that announces back to work has an army of recruiters cold calling all their employees offering them exactly what they want. More money and work from home.

It's an impossible situation for businesses.

Flipside, what's more important to look at is only what you can control. You wont change your employer's mind on whatever bad decision they make.There are only bad decisions to make.

You can control yourself. Do you even want to go in for 2 days a week? Personally I'm not interested in paying for parking, 1 ply toilet paper and pointless chitchat about moon knight or some other tv show i havent had the chance to watch.

You can instead make the decision for what you can control. There's an awful lot of employers who will accept completely remote workers.

gernb4• 4 years ago

The building argument doesn't seem to make business sense so I doubt that's the reason. An empty building is not consuming as much power as a full building so even if the business is wasting money on a building and has to because of a lease they'd still save money for employees to be remote.

In other words. From most expensive to least

* all employees at office

* empty office, employees remote

* no office, employees remote

Business would do whatever is cheapest unless they believe they won't hit their targets. So it's got nothing to do with the buildings existing.

Must be some other reason.

incomingpain3• 4 years ago

It doesnt make business sense for the normal case, but the unexpected covid lockdowns and inaction on immediately selling the buildings expecting to go back. Later to find out you aren't going back?

Like in OP's pov, the intention is 2 days a week but as he expects, it's just to slowly ease back into 5 days a week. No doubt seeing that the lower cost being to take some HR losses is less than the huge discount in selling the building.

nicoburns3• 4 years ago

But then again maintenance, utilities, toilet paper, sickness, taxes, etc are all burning a hole in their pocket. So better to force people back to the office?

That only makes sense if they derive value from people being in the office. Otherwise there is nothing lost by simply leaving the office empty.

incomingpain3• 4 years ago

That only makes sense if they derive value from people being in the office. Otherwise there is nothing lost by simply leaving the office empty.

Having the building is a cost.

The better thing that OP or OPlikes is that they should be considering unusual options to discover a not-bad decision.

What if instead of forcing people back to the office that they instead buy a ton of hydroponic systems. Start growing food with their unused office space.

If enough businesss do this, we might not have a food shortage. We might avoid a disaster that seems inevitable.

mejutoco• 4 years ago

Now it would be a good time to zone some of those office buildings as flats and offer them for people to rent. Not everywhere, but there are a lot of office areas that are perfectly inhabitable. That would solve the weaker demand for office space and help keeping the price of rent under control at a time when inflation is high (and probably will get higher).

edit:conjunctions

erik_seaberg3• 4 years ago

It might be hard to persuade a city to change the zoning and building and fire codes. Especially in California, a lot of big cities prefer more business space and less housing because of tax revenue vs. costs to provide services, and current homeowners (reliable voters) are enjoying equity appreciation from the shortage.

pacifika• 4 years ago

Assuming the intention is not to miscommunicate, remote workers need access to the communication pipeline and decisions graph. With hybrid working, many of these are happening face to face, around the watercooler etc, and the burden falls on the office worker to duplicate this work digitally. That is not effective so eventually no longer happens, so remote workers lose out, and office work prevails.

This is why good fully remote organisations decided to not have an office, and appreciate transparency, working in the open, supporting one another etc. Of course these values are not exclusively fully remote.

crate_barre• 4 years ago

Non-remote work is the same as hearing a low ball offer in negotiations. I’ll keep looking unless I’m desperate. And if I am desperate, I’ll leave as soon as I’m not, as is with tradition.

msarrel• 4 years ago

My thinking is that we're approaching this from what we would like to do, and our bosses are approaching this from what is of the most monetary value. They're paying rent. They really don't care if the software development business model no longer fits sitting in an office, they're paying that rent and we had damn well better get our asses in that office. They're willing to lie to get us there too.

In case you're wondering where I'm coming from, my company switched to purely remote. Yet we're still renting a huge office, and we're told to go there every once in awhile. But we're purely remote. It seems pretty obvious that we're just remote until someone can crack the whip and make us go back so they feel like they're getting their money's worth on rent.

I think the other thing worth mentioning, we're not alone. This is going to be done to all of us. Remote work is great, but it turns out companies aren't run for the benefit of the worker.

MattGaiser2• 4 years ago

Companies have the problem that half their workforce wants the office and half wants remote, so I would say that hybrid is the truce. The alternative is massive losses of one side or the other.

Although I think that it is probably better for companies to pick a side as neither will be happy with the arrangement as it (at least when i was at a hybrid company) just meant going on Zoom from our office desks.

jefftk2• 4 years ago

Or, for companies that are large enough, we could have remote vs in-person at the team or product area level.

MattGaiser2• 4 years ago

I would be interested to see how well one company culture could handle that. For example, you can get away with crappy documentation for an in person team and just hope that osmosis handles knowledge transfer. That doesn't work with remote.

WithinReason• 4 years ago

In my company it's on a per person level. You can work from the office 5 days or from home 5 days or anything in between.

Jochim• 4 years ago

Hybrid with mandatory office days also leads to massive losses. A friend recently switched to a company that announced mandatory office days and his entire team has basically left.

Hybrid is the worst of both worlds, you're almost guaranteed to have someone calling in and you need to live close enough to the office that you can't really take advantage of cheaper house prices/more space.

jefftk2• 4 years ago

Our office is Tue-Thr in the office, with Monday and Friday optionally. The idea is that this lets people collaborate on work that is best done in person, by having everyone present for the same three days. Still too soon to see how well this works.

anoonmoose• 4 years ago

We're doing hybrid with two (or less preferably but they didn't say that out loud) days WFH per week and it's clear most people chose Mon and Fri as their two days. I think your office's way would be better.

giantg2• 4 years ago

I sort of agree. However, I think they pretty much have to be hybrid to be even a little competitive these days. My company is piloting a full remote position because they're having trouble hiring.

gilbetron• 4 years ago

Depends on the company and their situation. My wife works for a university, and they are always struggling with office space for people and parking for people, hybrid work is a blessing for the university, as it greatly alleviates a lot of problems the university were struggling with. The company I work for has all kinds of beautiful, recently renovated and leased space in a giant city - they really want people back in the office (but true remote people have grown significantly as well, so I'm not that worried about it, being fully remote). General Motors is permanently letting a lot of people stay remote/hybrid, because they realized a great cost saving, and people are happier and work more because they don't have 2+ hours worth of commute each day.

It will be interesting to see how the competitive advantages work themselves out. We'll see if in-person communication is as important as legend has it.

dougmwne3• 4 years ago

I think a significant number of people get into leadership roles because they enjoy having power over others. The ultimate power is control over the bodies of others. Why settle for slack chats and zoom calls when you could have your employees sitting all around you at your beck and call? We individual contributors may not think about this much, but the absolute thrill of being above others in the hierarchy only reaches its fullness when the employees get out of the damn pajamas and into the open offices. Please pick me up a coffee while you are at it.

api2• 4 years ago

There's also a direct threat to the jobs of a lot of middle managers from telework. The company's upper level management may realize a lot of these high salary managers are not necessary or that they obviously aren't doing their jobs well since the same value gets created with people out of the office.

The push to get butts back in seats is 100% about job security for middle management and maintaining the value of commercial real estate. I've seen evidence of CRE leaning on the media and politicians to push a "return to work" narrative.

outsidetheparty2• 4 years ago

Maybe it’s just because I’m a teleworking middle manager, but I’ve never understood this argument that telework threatens middle management. Middle management doesn’t magically become unnecessary when employees are working from home instead of the office — if anything it’s _more_ important when everyone isn’t in the same physical location picking up their direction by osmosis.

jacknews• 4 years ago

I agree, in some sense the office is like the wonky low chair in some interviews. It's much easier for management to intimidate workers when they are there in person.

Now is really a good opportunity to redefine the relationship between employer and employee, and 'work' in general, and I hope we collectively push forward with it, not just sink back into the semi-abusive situation of before.

jayd162• 4 years ago

If you're reading this and at the whim of a coffee request, get a new job.

Managers really do need to communicate with the team and the team really does need to communicate with each other. That really does happen better in person. Even if it feels like a distraction when someone needs to communicate with you but you don't with them.

johnwheeler8• 4 years ago

That really does happen better in person

Says who? Some management study? My anecdotal experience tells me I’ve formed stronger relationships over zoom and slack than I have working in person with people I truly cannot stand. At least with zoom and slack, if I don’t like you, I can hide your window behind my IDE.

And there’s no rule that says I have to like everyone and everyone has to like me. There’s no rule that says I should want to spend my free time with so and so. How about, I choose who I spend my time with and you choose what I work on and pay me for that?

jonathankoren4• 4 years ago

That really does happen better in person.

Prior to 2020 this was certainly the conventional conjecture, but the world has had two years of full remote. That’s a natural experiment, and the results are in. Companies didn’t collapse. Therefore, that’s not true.

Even in The Before Times, I lead a team that was effectively 100% distributed across North America, with only about half us capable of physically meeting once or twice a week. There as no difference. Slack the person, or hop on a call.

Personally, I think the real reason that’s driving return to work is big companies wasting literally billions of dollars on real estate. Better stick folks in those boxes, or the execs made a huge mistake, and of course execs didn’t make a mistake, because the execs are geniuses to revival the demigods.

closeparen6• 4 years ago

I think a significant number of people get into leadership roles because they like human interaction. Their jobs still consist of doing human interaction all day. And human interaction is genuinely very unpleasant on Zoom/Slack relative to real life.

Frankly I don’t think there is an amount you could pay me to do back-to-back Zoom meetings all day every day. My price would be high enough that I’d retire on it pretty quick. Management doesn’t have to flee the industry in protest of intolerable working conditions; it controls the working conditions. We should it expect it, all else being equal, to secure the working conditions best adapted to doing management work. And that means presence.

mouzogu4• 4 years ago

I think communication is a different subject. I have no problem with true flexibility where people are free to meet in person when it makes sense.

I think the original comment is around owning the employee's time, which is most effected when you have some ownership of their physical presence.

For example, we often have mandatory company wide meetings where the subject is only of interest to 5% of people but yet everyone is forced to be present and attentive for the entire period, adding another level of forced fakery to our daily lives.

johnwheeler8• 4 years ago

So, your desire to have in person human interaction trumps my desire to stay home because like you say, you control the working conditions. What kind of shit is that?

bluefirebrand4• 4 years ago

And human interaction is genuinely very unpleasant on Zoom/Slack relative to real life.

I don't find being in the other side of a webcam much different than being on the other side of a table. Maybe that's a sign my own brain is weird but really, it's the same to me.

We should it expect it, all else being equal, to secure the working conditions best adapted to doing management work

No, we should expect it to provide the working conditions best adapted to their team's needs.

Fuck this whole idea that managers are more important than ICs.

PragmaticPulp2• 4 years ago

I'm an IC-turned-manager. There are definitely some bad managers out there, but generally managers aren't that different than ICs in terms of motivation. We all just want to get our jobs done and do good work as a team.

We individual contributors may not think about this much, but the absolute thrill of being above others in the hierarchy only reaches its fullness when the employees get out of the damn pajamas and into the open offices. Please pick me up a coffee while you are at it.

This is a wildly cynical take. If you're dealing with managers like this, you're not in a normal tech office environment. Every decent tech company I've ever worked with has put a lot of pressure on managers to treat employees well. Retention is a huge issue, especially in this market, and managers actually spend a lot of time trying to cater to their IC's wishes rather than jerking them around.

Any tech manager who acts like you describe will steadily fail out of tech companies due to employee attrition.

akkartik• 4 years ago

I'm curious what your take is on:

* Whether people should go into work

* Where the pressure to go into work comes from in an org

jvanderbot• 4 years ago

Agree 100% (as an IC-turned-manager myself).

5 years ago, I exercised my privilege (as an IC with a lenient boss), to work from another state for a few months.

During that time, I dialed into meetings that were otherwise held in person.

My experience:

- Nobody remembered to ask me for my opinion, so I was constantly interrupting

- Often, people just forgot to open the telcon, so I was ignored on hold

- Often, people forgot to present the slides / visuals over telcon as well as the projector, so I had to interrupt them and cause 5 minute delays

- Whiteboard designs? Flat out of scope

- Try pitching ideas over the phone to a room full of stakeholders. They treat you like a spam caller

A project I was leading for a new design was "killed" and "revived" with exactly the same team, but another (onsite) person swapped out for my role. That person is now in charge of the project, and it's a big, big deal, with attention all the way up to Washington. His career is skyrocketing because of this.

Working hybrid may not be a scam in and of itself, but I suspect someone with 10+ years experience managing recognizes that all remote, or all in person, are both tenable solutions, but hybrid will cause a separate-and-not-equal workforce schism.

voxic11• 4 years ago

Sure your normal IC-turned-manager is not like this, but such people usually have more engineering oriented management responsibilities, they are not the ones making the decisions about "return to office" or "hybrid work".

maerF0x02• 4 years ago

I'm an IC-turned-manager.

Let's all recall that IC-Turned-Manager is a rarity in the general management space. Engineers choosing from amongst their own is an anomaly, not the norm, across many industries.

kodah4• 4 years ago

There are definitely some bad managers out there, but generally managers aren't that different than ICs in terms of motivation

ime, bad managers are more common than decent managers. Also, most managers are not IC-turned-manager at least at any significantly high level.

dougmwne3• 4 years ago

I do want to point out that I said, leader, not manager. There is a certain power hunger that concentrates as you move up the ladder. Line level managers, especially in tech are, as you say, servant-leaders with a prime focus on keeping engineers happy. They are not the people making decisions on return to office. Walk up that ladder a bit more and you will see more of the sociopathy that is a specific quality of kings and CEOs.

bennyelv• 4 years ago

You must have had some very unlucky experiences to have this kind of cynical take on things.

In my whole career (17 years at this point) I've encountered only one manager who was in it for the power and control... and he got fired.

I spent a significant proportion of my career as an IC but I'm a senior manager now, and I can tell you that "power over people" is precisely not what I'm after. The fact that I have power (and not forgetting that that power comes with responsibility), is not relevant to me and not a positive part of the job.

Telling people what to do is orders of magnitude less effective than convincing, inspiring, and motivating them to do it.

streslip• 4 years ago

It is highly dependent on the organization. Having worked for Apple, the opposite seemed true. Anyone with empathy, charisma, and leadership skills was quickly filtered out. There certainly were a few good eggs, but they were rare and far between. It takes a certain sort to succeed there.

The company seemed to select for extreme psychopathy the higher you looked.

jdlyga• 4 years ago

The best leaders have people and leadership skills, but have no desire at all for the power and might not even want the position. Two of the best bosses I've ever worked with begrudgingly were put into that position and did an excellent job. Kind of like Cincinnatus or George Washington, being perfectly content giving it all up and going back to a simple farm life.

commandlinefan• 4 years ago

Two of the best bosses I've ever worked with

Well... two of the best bosses from whose perspective? Your perspective of a great boss might be way different than the perspective of a metrics-obsessed "data driven" CFO.

greedo10• 4 years ago

Haha. Comparing business leaders to Cincinnatus and Washington is perfect manager porn. I bet someone has written a book on the parallels.

Can you name one business leader, just one, who has demonstrated no desire for power (in all its forms) and who didn't even want the position. Just one of "The best leaders" you're talking about.

crossroadsguy• 4 years ago

I think managers are usually in it just for the money. Like most other people. It might be not fruitful to read much into it.

Many teams find it easier to work sitting close to each other. Is this superior? Is WFH superior? Is hybrid superior? I don’t think there’s a fixed answer because such things work both individually and collectively.

WFH can be better for you but not for 2 of your coworkers. Now who’s supposed to adapt to what?

For example: for me meetings and discussions are too many times better in person.

And hybrid is worse imho. You are stuck to living close to office so you can’t live wherever you wish. And then you’re working from office but also working from home so for many teams and folks that expectation of some sort of “always availability” (work/life blurred line) will continue.

fartcannon2• 4 years ago

WFH is better in the long run for the environment and thus for everyone. Also, with fewer people commuting to large cities, smaller towns will grow. And wealth will redistribute to local neighbourhoods. Bedroom communities will have patrons with money (for a change) able to sustain businesses that were infeasible when everyone spent their entire day in the city. Youth might be less inclined to brain drain to the big city, and then support interesting local restaurants and bars. Parents will support local children's activities. Grand parents will live near their children. Bike paths, public transit, public parks will all have reasons to exist! Man, it sounds amazing all listed out here.

evilbob93• 4 years ago

My mom was a technical recruiter for a big Catholic hospital system in the Detroit area in the late 90's. She decided that she needed a copy of Doctor Seuss's _Yertle the Turtle_ for her cubicle because she thought it described her office situation (management creating new layers below them to lord over).

Tech people often don't make the transition to management well.

ne0flex• 4 years ago

I agree. With hybrid work, one thing I noticed is that, at least among my coworkers and myself, is that productivity will be concentrated to those one or two days in the office and the WFH days will productivity will fall dramatically. When we were fully remote, productivity held consistently throughout the week. I'm willing to bet that the organization is monitoring this trend and will try to build a case for needing full back to office.

Though at the same time, my company opted didn't renew their lease on two office floors (out of a total of 8 floors) due to hybrid work and employees not having a designated desk. So who knows.

hardware2win• 4 years ago

I believe that theres value in planning/meeting in person and coding at home

warrenm2• 4 years ago

"Hybrid working" (partially in-person, partially remote) may or may not be a "ruse"

For certain purposes, being in-person can be useful

If the office space is already paid-for, it's silly (from a business perspective) to not use it

If you have needs for scheduled all-hands or other types of meetings, doing them all over Zoom can be much slower / less efficient than doing it face to face

Mister_Snuggles• 4 years ago

If the office space is already paid-for, it's silly (from a business perspective) to not use it

This is known as the sunk-cost fallacy. Just because you have the space is not sufficient reason to use it.

I agree though, being in-person can be incredibly useful, but it very much depends on the team, the type of work, etc. It's also just nice to see people in a less structured manner - e.g., water cooler chats vs setting up a Teams call.

warrenm2• 4 years ago

It may be a sunk-cost fallacy

It may not

Fact remains: if it has been paid-for, there's a strong justification for using it if you have it

miloignis• 4 years ago

I've been 2 days in hybrid for a while now, and it's worked out pretty well. Monday is most all meetings, then the WFH days are tech work, with the remaining in person day being a good catch all for if I have to work in person with someone on something technical.

pm90• 4 years ago

It’s definitely an appeasement.

Pre-Pandemic, fully remote folks were at a distinct disadvantage since they would be cut off completely from the politics, relationship building etc. that would happen via people being in the office. This strategy is clearly aimed at discouraging people from being fully remote by making them aware of the “benefits” of working in an office.

I feel sorta lucky because my team is distributed between two cities on the West Coast, so even if people are in the office you still have to video conference … making it somewhat pointless.

I was talking to a friend at Apple who had been forced to work from their office. They are really unhappy; primarily they were so used to the peace and quiet of wfh that they’re having a hard time getting anything done in a loud (relatively) office.

gwbas1c3• 4 years ago

I think there are some well-known horror stories of "hybrid" companies that some companies are trying to avoid.

(Disclaimer: I have to telecommute, I've been doing it since 2014. Because of where I live, I can only go in about 2-3 times a month.)

For example: I worked for Intel in 2005-2007. It was hybrid by necessity: They had offices all over the world, and were so large that it was impractical for everyone to be on one campus; and even if everyone was on one campus, travel among buildings was somewhat time consuming. Thus, many meetings were conducted via teleconference, and no one cared if you were in the office. (I would always take early morning calls at home and leave after the call.)

While I was there, it became obvious that people were abusing the liberal telecommuting policy. My boss went on vacation for one week, and then "telecommuted" the second week. I quickly realized he had an agreement with his higher up to get a 2nd week of vacation as long as he checked email and kept up appearances.

A few months later Intel cut out most telecommuting. The rumors that came back to me was that a lot of people were just goofing off; and even running 2nd businesses, like liquor stores, while on company time.

There's also the story of Yahoo. This is well documented, so I'll leave it up to someone else to dig up links, but the general belief is that many Yahoo telecommuters were just keeping up appearances and not really working. The company cracked down because it was going broke paying people to do nothing.

So, I don't think it's a "ruse." I think it's a case of a company doing what it thinks is in its best interests. If it's in your best interests to be 100% remote, or 90% remote, ect, have a frank discussion with your boss, and if they can't accommodate you, find a new job.

mindcrime2• 4 years ago

I think it's a case of a company doing what it thinks is in its best interests.

"Thinks" being the key word. Although I would posit that anybody who think this way hasn't thought about it very hard. I mean, it's trivially obvious that a worker can be in the office, and still contribute absolutely nothing. You can sit at the office, or at home, or in Tahiti, and surf Hacker News all day just the same. At the end of it all, companies that don't know how to measure the productivity of their people, and make any necessary adjustments based on those measurements, are going to get screwed.

ericmay3• 4 years ago

You can also avoid this by hiring the right people - so to me this is indicative of an even deeper issue within the company which is bad hiring, bad/poor expectations, no consequences for failure, etc. Remote/Hybrid/On-Prem discussions are just the symptom.

gwbas1c3• 4 years ago

I don't think a large company can unilaterally "hire the right people" to make hybrid work in all groups and departments.

That was why Intel and Yahoo made work for home only on a case-by-case basis.

kijin• 4 years ago

Many companies back then had no idea how to assign work and evaluate performance for telecommuting employees. Many companies still have no idea, so there's a huge opportunity for employees to take advantage of the unclear rules.

Even in software, it's notoriously hard to estimate how long a project is going to take. You just assigned some bug to someone and told them to fix it by Tuesday. Is the employee slacking off if the bug isn't fixed by Tuesday, or is the issue actually more difficult than it seemed to be? Is it a bit of both?

People will always find creative ways to get paid while doing nothing. The hastily set up WFH system just happens to contain more loopholes that the higher-ups aren't prepared for.

drewcoo• 4 years ago

a lot of people were just goofing off . . . while on company time

That's the sign of a company that should pay for work instead of time.

woah• 4 years ago

Why not look at what someone's actually producing? The fact that the only thing necessary was to "keep up appearances" gives me some strong 'Office Space' vibes. I think it's telling that the two companies mentioned are foundering in or out of the office.

sys_64738• 4 years ago

It's all down to the individual company I guess. Some will have maniac managers who quickly want to reassert their authority and control but you gotta ask if you really want to work there. If an employer tells you something is "mandatory" then you can still decide for yourself. You don't have to do what they demand. you can either leave the building or ignore it and see what happens next. Employers don't own you.

thrrck• 4 years ago

We have something similar, the 2 days are not mandatory though, it would just be appreciated if people could make it to the office (this is just our team, other teams handle it differently). The two days were chosen as a team and we tried to accommodate everyones needs like childcare duties or and so on. We use the office days for collaborative tasks such as architecture reviews, peer debugging, idea brainstorming, drinking beer. And the days at home for actual implementation work, i.e. producing code. It has only been a couple of weeks and so far I believe it works quite well, we also said we will review if this is how we want to continue working in a couple of months. So it could be the same for you, but if you as an employee cannot shape it in any way and only have to follow rules, I would be a bit suspicious.

mouzogu4• 4 years ago

yes, we definitely don't have any say on the matter at all.

sp332• 4 years ago

If the drive to get people in the office is top-down, then I'd be suspicious. But if people are actually asking for it because some parts of the job are easier or just more enjoyable in person, then it might not lead to going back to the office full time.

ryathal• 4 years ago

Hybrid makes a lot of sense to me for these reasons. In person can be so much faster and simpler for heavily collaborative tasks. Five people in a conference room for an hour will accomplish more than those same 5 in a zoom call, and it's less likely for unnecessary people to be part of an in person meeting. Spending 4+ hours on Zoom/Teams calls in a day is also one of the most draining experiences I've ever had as well, full days of meetings in person are far more tolerable.

SheinhardtWigCo• 4 years ago

Former head of HR at Google thinks so:

“The purpose of the ‘boil the frog method’ [is] to do it subtly and thereby avoid difficult questions and conflict”

https://fortune.com/2022/04/04/former-google-hr-chief-laszlo...

kevinventullo• 4 years ago

FWIW, Google is also allowing people to apply to be full-time remote. In the few instances I’m privy to, it’s been approved.

ratww2• 4 years ago

My company is hybrid, but coming to the office is entirely optional. Enough people naturally started coming back once in a while.

The way they convinced us that it won’t change on a C-Level’s whim is by drastically reducing the office size so it’s not even possible for anyone to come back full time. But you can work at a co-working space if need be.

The company saved a lot of money by not having an office and I’ve never seen such a productive team in my entire career.

AlotOfReading• 4 years ago

I wouldn't bet on C-levels respecting reality if it gets in the way of their plans. Mine recently decided that 700+ people could share <200 desks on the same days in a building that can legally hold ~500.

ratww2• 4 years ago

Well, we have laws for that over here, so ours are gonna respect it.

iamdbtoo• 4 years ago

I would assume that's the case if I were you. In my experience, compromises like this are really just the first step in a process to implement an unpopular policy. It would damage morale too much to do require the full week so they start there and take steps over time to minimize the impact.

bayareabadboy• 4 years ago

Maybe sometimes. I do think it’s very funny to use the word “ruse” unironically.

mindcrime2• 4 years ago

I do think it’s very funny to use the word “ruse” unironically.

Why so?

j4yav• 4 years ago

Hybrid is worse than all-remote or all-office. It’s essentially forcing you to come into the office to sit on zoom calls.

the_doctah• 4 years ago

Easy. Ask yourself, "Would my company have done this if the pandemic never happened?"

If the answer is no, then there's your answer. It is appeasement.

marcosdumay2• 4 years ago

There are plenty of places that would never have gone remote without the pandemic, but when forced found out it's not a problem, and decided to keep it.

alchemyromcom• 4 years ago

I honestly think there are a lot of people that need some level of human interaction to function properly, and those are likely the people pushing for hybrid or back to office. Keep in mind, also, that not everyone's work from home situation is ideal. If you are already an established professional, and you have more than one room to create an office, then work from home is a dream come true. If you are a new hire, or student intern, sharing an apartment (even a crappy one) and your single bedroom is now your office, then work from home can feel a little like a prison sentence. But yes, likely hybrid work is a ruse, but also I wouldn't be surprised if work from home is also a ruse--imagine a scenario like this: "since your home is your office, we are going to need to monitor you on off hours and we'd also like you to start doing more overtime".

62951413• 4 years ago

It's so much easier to discuss things face-to-face. I feel so much more energized by mere presence of other people (and I score high on any introvert/Asperger test) I was surprised myself in the last few weeks. I welcome the return to normality. Walking two feet from my bed to my desk got psychologically tough a long time ago.

Even though I have the worst commute on my team I want to be in the office a couple days a week (it's going to be 3). But our campus is great, we have real cubicles and standing desks, and even free meals.

postalrat• 4 years ago

Reorganize teams based on who wants to be in the office and who doesn't. Seems like it won't be much fun or productive to be on a team where half the people want to work remote and the other half wants to be in the office.

hackitup7• 4 years ago

I am in leadership at a company and at least for us it is absolutely not a ruse. My team wants hybrid (or remote), people we want to hire want hybrid (or remote), I want them to be happy. As a result we're hybrid/remote and incentives are about as aligned as they can be. Things might change but I view this as a reasonably likely steady state and am doing nothing to change it.

alfl• 4 years ago

We're in the middle of leasing an office because the market for office space is flooded right now: way more supply than demand. We're getting a great price on a long-ish term lease.

We did some in-office tests in a coworking space and productivity went through the roof. We seem to be seeing that offices are a kind of thinking and focus tool.

Approx. half of our team is remote, so we're kitting out the office with TVs, cameras, and microphones to create a "hybrid space". We're probably going to add some practices like, "all meetings are video calls". Things like that.

lbrito• 4 years ago

There are many fully remote companies. Just pick one. Don't work at a company that presses rto.

richardwhiuk• 4 years ago

Is remote work a ruse to allow companies to outsource all of their work to cheaper jurisdictions?

erik_seaberg3• 4 years ago

As appealing as remote work is, this is my worry. It’s one thing to compete with others who chose to relocate near Bay Area tech giants, another to live with high expenses but compete with the entire English-speaking world.

paxys2• 4 years ago

Everyone is missing one key advantage (for the employer) of such a setup – mandating even a single day per week from the office ensures that employees live in the geographical area they are supposed to. So they can't "cheat", for example, by listing a bay area address and getting a bay area salary but actually working out of Mexico.

gernb4• 4 years ago

I'm sure a few people were caught doing something like this but is this really a problem? Are 15% of employees doing this or 0.0001%?

jodrellblank3• 4 years ago

Why is that 'cheating', who is being cheated out of what?

zeroonetwothree• 4 years ago

I wouldn't call it 'cheating', but there are a lot of labor law and tax issues with having employees in different countries (or states in the US).

chias• 4 years ago

On my team, a couple of us started coming in on (most) Wednesdays. Slowly, more and more of us just started coming in on Wednesdays because it was fun to have a day where we would all hang out together / have lunch together / etc. It's been really nice. So in practice, most of us are now "Hybrid Working" and it's working out great.

That being said, if it was mandatory, I would have negative feelings about it.

paul7986• 4 years ago

They just tried that at where I work ... not many showed up and or went looking for another job. Management realized better just go full/permanent remote or lose our business and now we are fully remote forever. I was one who refuse to show up as its a 60 mile drive i use to do yet they hired tons of out state employees who will never go to the office and Im out of state (right across the line).

I bet what happened at my work will happen at other places of work due to competition .. as if the business loses employees they dont have a business. Joe Biden can try to force employees back for the sake of the old America but that's a joke ... no one needs to work in an office and I wont ever work in one again!

donpott• 4 years ago

I'm not sure about a deliberate ruse. In my experience, that level of forward planning is rare in big companies.

What is clear to me is that hybrid is the worst of both worlds: Incurring the many costs of having to come to the office, only to find that such and such colleague is at home, and there is little to zero added value to your presence there.

So from that, it follows naturally that many companies will slippery-slope into full time in the office, aducing that it is an advantage over hybrid.

jodrellblank3• 4 years ago

"What is clear to me is that hybrid is the worst of both worlds: Incurring the many costs of having to come to the office"

and the costs of having to maintain a home office. The costs of maintaining a commuting vehicle or transport ticket and office clothes, while not using them at least half the time. The time cost of commuting. The faff of a laptop, or the cost of two sets of equipment and the effort of keeping them in sync. It's the combined cost of working from home and working from the office, without the benefit of being able to work from a cheaper nicer home far away, or the benefit of committing to every day office work and having everyone in.

Programmers love the "union of all the negatives, none of the individual positives" when it's called "cross platform compatible software" so why not rebrand this from hybrid work to cross environment compatible work?

closeparen6• 4 years ago

Software engineering is a mix of collaboration and individual focused work. Zoom meetings are awful and the office is much better at supporting collaboration and human connections. The big loud open floor is a terrible place to think; WFH is much better at supporting focus. It remains to be seen whether we get the proportions right, or actually sort the right activities into the right settings, but it has the potential to be the best of both worlds.

Many were actually hybrid working before the pandemic. Regularly sending emails like “I have no meetings today and need to get this done, so I’m staying home.” Still physically and socially part of the team.

georgeecollins• 4 years ago

"What is clear to me is that hybrid is the worst of both worlds

I don't agree with this because I think my office is nice and not a barnyard. I mean a door, a window, nice amenities and easy use of a conference room for meetings. I have worked for tech companies that had offices that were like these giant open floors or cubicle farms. There were all these reasons people said they were good but really I think it was that they were cheap and it was easy to circulate people through them in places with high turnover. I'm never working in a place like that again.

My work is currently hybrid and what I like about it is if I want to work from home to keep odd hours or save time by not driving to work. If I want to have a particular time of focus, or host a meeting including guests, I can work in the office. Also, I should mention I have a short commute. Not everyone has all this, but this is what I think we should aspire to.

greedo10• 4 years ago

99% of office workers don't have an office with a door, or a short commute.

midnightmonster• 4 years ago

Sounds like temporary appeasement.

~6 years ago I switched from full time remote freelancing/consulting to full time at a local startup with just a handful of employees and 1 day/week in-person.

Then 1 day became 2. Then we got a real office and 2 became 3 with a worse commute. Then 3 became, unofficially, if you want to be taken seriously, you should come in every day, or at least 4 days/week. You could still leave early on Fridays! I stayed at 3 days/week until I found a new, fully-remote employer.

jpcfl8• 4 years ago

no clear value proposition to even being in office two days

There's plenty of value in in-person work. Body language is an important part of how we communicate. Spurious social interactions in the office are often the inspiration of important company initiatives. Async communication (e.g., Slack) is, IMHO, much less efficient than sync communication (e.g., tap on my colleagues shoulder).

My company has also implemented a hybrid pilot program: 3 in/2 out, with 4 weeks of discretionary remote work. I believe the idea is that there is value in remote work, and there is value in office work. Let's see if we can benefit from both.

mouzogu4• 4 years ago

Yeah I was probably being too specific to my development role where we have managed (in fact company has grown in revenue) despite all communication being via slack or teams.

I know there are cases where in person communication makes sense, but it should not be mandatory for all. This is why I say hybrid is a ruse because it applies to all and not just "flexible" for those who may need or prefer it.

jpcfl8• 4 years ago

should not be mandatory for all.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of hard-and-fast rules. If you think remote work is what is best for you and the company, you should discuss and arrangement with your manager. I'm sure the company is just setting these rules because they need to send a clear message, and they want to try and contain remote work.

Keep in mind that working remotely is still seen as an impediment to career development. People who work in the office tend to get promoted faster. Their work is more visible, they are presented with more opportunities, and, for lack of a better word, they can "schmooze" more.

sanderjd4• 4 years ago

Sometimes I think the different camps on this just break down on the "shoulder tap" line. I hate having my "shoulder tapped" (literally or metaphorically) and never tap on someone else's shoulder. A message saying "hey let me know when you get a chance to talk" is so much better for everyone IMO.

But I recognize that other people feel the opposite and I have no problem with that. I'd like to be able to work my way and for them to be able to work their way.

jpcfl8• 4 years ago

A message saying "hey let me know when you get a chance to talk" is so much better for everyone IMO

No, it is not. A deferral comes with overhead and is not always required. Some people, including myself, enjoy the spontaneous conversations sparked in the office. When I need to focus, I communicate this with my team.

If you do not like being disturbed, communicate this with the people around you. Everyone wants to be respectful of your time and focus.

silicon2401• 4 years ago

This is how your post reads to somebody who doesn't benefit from working in an office

There's plenty of value in in-person work.

There's plenty of value for me in in-person work, so everyone should work in-person even if there's no value in it for you.

Spurious social interactions in the office are often the inspiration of important company initiatives.

I only know how to socialize in person, so nobody should be allowed to socialize virtually

Async communication (e.g., Slack) is, IMHO, much less efficient than sync communication (e.g., tap on my colleagues shoulder).

I want to be able to physically interrupt your concentration and intrude on your personal space without you having any way to stop me

I hope this comment can help elucidate for you and other readers how miserable offices are for people who don't actually do better in-person, and how frustrating it is that people who want to work in-person feel the need for _everyone_ to work in-person with them, despite pro-remote people not needing others to change their working circumstances.

jpcfl8• 4 years ago

I’m sorry you feel this way.

If you are miserable at your job, I would suggest talking to your manager about it, or seeking employment elsewhere.

juve1996• 4 years ago

Spurious social interactions in the office are often the inspiration of important company initiatives.

And also major company conflicts. They are not all positive - many of these "social interactions" are bonds over hatred of the company and working to get out. But we ignore these sorts of interactions, for the narrative...

june_twenty4• 4 years ago

e.g., tap on my colleagues shoulder

This reads like a parody! The people who want to WFH don't _want_ shoulder tappers to be able to tap shoulders :)

jpcfl8• 4 years ago

If you don't want someone tapping on your shoulder, perhaps you should try telling them.

greedo10• 4 years ago

Congrats, you've picked the worst of both worlds. It's interesting that you chose "Spurious social interactions..." Spurious means fake, btw. If fake interactions are "often the inspiration of important company initiatives" then you're in a world of hurt. And what's with the HR speak? You sound like either the owner or founder hoping that what you write is real.

jpcfl8• 4 years ago

Woops. I mean spontaneous.

Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt and not being a complete jerk about it.

atoav• 4 years ago

Depends on the job I think. For many roles it can be beneficial to have somebody physically present at least once a week so people can meet and talk and have face-to-face discussions about things.

For other jobs or in different roles it could be totally unnecessary to be there at all.

In my job, being there is part of the job, because I need to fix thing in the infrastructure of the house. I didn't even have a single home office week during the whole pandemic — I also managed to not catch the damn thing up to now.

Yet I convinced my superiors that it would be beneficial to give me one home office day a week, precisely because people will not disturb me there. In terms of pushing out code it is easily the most productive day of the week. And it is friday on top of everything.

nowherebeen• 4 years ago

Are they paying for the office 2 days a week only? Probably not.

wokwokwok• 4 years ago

An across the board, “2 days mandatory” is a brute force HR policy to appease management; a genuine intention to continue to support remote working indefinitely would be phrased differently, like:

Converting the office into a collaboration space for people who need a reliable internet connection and/or a less disruptive environment (ie. than a noisy family) to get work done in.

0 days mandatory in the office; days in the office by collaborative decision amongst teams.

It’s quite obvious if you’re in camp A or camp B.

If you don’t like it, just leave. Plenty of remote jobs open; the good thing about a remote first company is that they collaborate in person as required; not because it’s required by HR.

sydbarrett742• 4 years ago

THIS. I wish HN had the ability for us to upvote comments.

bitxbitxbitcoin• 4 years ago

It actually does but you need a requisite amount of points, karma, whatever it is called here first.

jimmont2• 4 years ago

gave you an upvote to get you that much closer, HN is a product from a time before the term UX existed, not that it would matter

bin_bash2• 4 years ago

That’s what the little triangle does on every comment.

adverbly• 4 years ago

Noone say anything...

trollied• 4 years ago

Companies looking for the best engineers are slowly going to realise that not offering fully remote is going to considerably limit the pool of available candidates. Obviously, money can sway that though.

smarri• 4 years ago

100% agree.

arghnoname• 4 years ago

I think there's no question that employees are going to have the expectation that they can choose their work environment and this will affect recruiting. However, I don't think it's a given that remote options are an unalloyed good. People have different preferences. This is a sorting function and both remote and non-remote companies are going to have limited candidate pools.

For my own part, I prefer companies that force some shared in-person time. I vastly prefer in-person relations and collaborating. I would also prefer companies that provide some time at home, so for me the hybrid option is ideal and the question is how many days in-office are required. I can't imagine I'm unique.

I fully recognize different people have different preferences and I don't think there's one size fits all here. I'm glad if we can self-select on this.

bsder• 4 years ago

Companies looking for the best engineers are slowly going to realise that not offering fully remote is going to considerably limit the pool of available candidates.

And yet I would argue that going remote is going to collapse the junior level talent pool.

For example, most of the shit hot programmers I know who don't have a degree generally became so because they had smoking good mentors that they had easy access to--and they absorbed from them like a sponge. (This is also true of those with degrees--but it's easier to argue that mentorship is definitive when someone doesn't have a degree) Online crushes that avenue of interaction.

Even worse, there is no reason to put energy into training as someone will just leave to another company. Corporate training was already viewed as something unprofitable, and all the online makes that value proposition even worse.

On the plus side: this may revitalize the in-person "user group" which has been kind of dead for a while. I find that my interaction with several users groups is now probably stronger than my interaction with coworkers.

paulcole• 4 years ago

Most companies need to get over themselves and realize they don’t need the best engineers. OK is good enough a lot of the time.

june_twenty4• 4 years ago

If you don’t like it, just leave

Friendly reminder that not everyone can just leave their jobs. Women who are pregnant or who are trying to become pregnant. Men who are expecting to be a father. People with healthcare requirements.

dopidopHN3• 4 years ago

Friendly reminder that a lots of workers outside of the USA have access to healthcare that are not tie to their jobs, but to previous payments they made to a national healthcare system.

There coverage will not stop if they switch job because they already paid for it.

sydbarrett742• 4 years ago

Managers who mandate hybrid work are employing a 'boil the frog slowly' approach. At first, two days will be mandatory, then three, then all five. Power over others is a drug, and they won't willingly cede those sweet, sweet dopamine spikes.

gernb4• 4 years ago

So I someone that would prefer to be at the office. I like socializing and getting lunch with coworkers. I like casually asking question, running ideas by others, all things that, FOR ME, don't work remote.

Unfortunately, at least so far, people in my area aren't coming in so I've shown up at the office and in my space few others are showing up. Also, getting rooms for meetings is no fun

I don't know what I'm going to do but I will likely quit and find an in office team if things don't get better. Humans (most) are social animals https://www.google.com/search?q=humans+are+social+animals

acheron• 4 years ago

I’m sorry you don’t have any real friends to get your socialization in, but forcing your coworkers to be your pretend friends is not the answer.

oblio6• 4 years ago

That's just a silly approach to life, sorry.

You're stuck in an office with other people 8 hours per day, you might as well make friends. Over a working life of 40 years that's 40 x 45 x 5 x 8 = about 8 full years of your life.

And no, those people don't have to be your direct teammates, especially in bigger companies. Just look for compatible people.

Relationships are based on proximity, heck, even most marriages start like that: highscool classmates, college students studying the same thing, co-workers, neighbors, whatever.

freedom20993• 4 years ago

To be fair some of my colleagues are among my best friends… we have been working together for a decade, we go out all the time, we have weekly DND night, we go camping, we travel together…

tapanjk• 4 years ago

What do you think?

I think so too. This is what I vented on Twitter a few weeks ago (pardon the tone -- in my defense, I don't have many followers): "You keep hearing about the hybrid model, but that is just corporate speak to lure you back into office. It is just a matter of time before they declare that they tried hybrid and it did not work, so it's going to be office only from now on."

https://twitter.com/tapanjk/status/1510491733640896515

hatware• 4 years ago

At my last job, productivity took a huge hit when everyone went WFH, and everything seemed to slow to a crawl. The funny thing was, it was obvious as an IC, but management kept saying "Nope, things are moving as normal!"

The team I was on needed a serious adjustment period because we worked with every other team in the company (1000+ employees). The synergy that existed in the office and allowed our team to be a force multiplier was drained almost immediately.

Ultimately, I had to leave because the pace and variety of work was suffering and not getting better. The culture was also on its last legs from psychologically torturing folks for 2 years.

notatoad• 4 years ago

Hybrid work where you're required to be in the office 2 out of 5 days with no further requirement of which two days, I think that is as you say "a ruse", and management demonstrating that they dont trust you to work from home.

If there's an actual stated purpose for those two days to be in-person days (like your team has designated day for in-person meetings or planning sessions or something, or there's some task that needs to be done in-person each day and there's a rotation of who is responsible for it) then it makes sense.

dibujante• 4 years ago

Definitely a ruse. The main value proposition of working remote is not needing to be within commute distance of the office.

nicoburns3• 4 years ago

That may be true. But for people who are used to working 100% in the office, hybrid working has value of its own.

wyldberry• 4 years ago

IMO no. I think work that is creative + collaborative in nature (ex: entertainment) performs best with a few days where people are physically around. It's not just the act of meetings, it's how charged people can get when they are around other people on the same wavelength creating new things.

I think for junior engineers, being in person is invaluable a few times a week just having a whiteboard around. Early in my career having a senior dev around to bounce questions off of, or work CTF problems together really, really helped me.

Certainly there is some number of managers who just want control over people, but i think that's probably smaller than what some commenters are implying. The The questions i use for if a particular way of working is a ruse or effective is this:

1. What industry am I working in? If you work in an industry physically making things, you're likely to also benefit from being in the office some days. Same with creative work.

2. What's the ratio of "senior" to mid and junior level employees?

3. Is the company willing to let individual teams make more flexible decisions? I.e go down to 1 day a week, 1 day a sprint etc?

My end goal is to understand the nature of the organization I work for, why it makes decisions the way it does, and if leadership wants to send a message, or if they are open to trying to find the way that is productive and keeps people happy.

thraway3837• 4 years ago

Yes. What did you think the future was? All remote and WFH? People are already running into issues where interpersonal conflicts cannot be dealt with effectively. There's no guidelines or ever been done before on how people who have never met each other can resolve conflicts.

Long distance relationships don't work, so why would they for the workplace? I'm not advocating for going back to work 5 days a week, but remote only works when you have a solid relationship with your peers and leadership. But workplaces are stunted socially, with either non existent relationships, or fake relationships that's only self serving.

greedo10• 4 years ago

Conflict resolution is no different WFH than in the office. You think people are going to solve their issues by wrestling in the parking lot? Or by being put in timeout by HR?

Conflicts get resolved exactly the same why WFH as remote; you discuss the issue with your manager, they talk to the other person, and have a joint meeting if necessary. No needs for hugs and handshakes...

The onus is on you to prove that remote work doesn't work.

TrapLord_Rhodo• 4 years ago

i've been working remotely since 2017 and around year 4 it gets old and you crave being back in the office again. I imagine this will be a cyclical thing in the media.

christophilus• 4 years ago

I'm not sure about your question, but I'll answer a related one:

Hybrid teams are a ruse. If you're a remote employee, but most of the team is on-premises, you're a second-class citizen, and you'll be first to go if cuts are made. At least, that's how it's been wherever I've worked.

I was never the one cut, as I was generally on-premises when in mixed teams.

These days, I work only for 100% remote / remote-first companies if possible.

kkfx2• 4 years ago

IMVHO it's just a stupid middle-ground who makes all unhappy to avoid making all unhappy.

With hybrid works you need or fully portable gears or two set of them, witch means not just a craptop in a backpack but also docking station, monitor(s), keyboard&other stuff etc. Long story short or the company spend the double in hw or at home you'll probably use something from you, maybe also the entire desktop with all relevant security risks. Not only working less in the office, but still having an office the company spent essentially the same amount of money and the workers still have to live around, perhaps in an expensive area or in little houses since around the office perhaps there is no room for better accommodations and still need a home office to be in comfort at home.

Personally I think hybrid will last for a short period of disastrous time and here the sole possible ruse might be provoking and using the hybrid disasters to state "look, remote working does not work, we need business as usual". After since we can't sustain the current social transformation in a classic way of life WFH will be the standard for a little slice of potentially remote workers, while others will be forced in the classic South Korean's Goshiwong model with a combination of hyper-stagflation and false environmental claims.

Then the many who still can't understand that:

- no, we can't continue as usual, we can't keep going on oil etc

- no, the Green New Deal is green in the dollar and stereotypical chem waste corroded barrels not spring grass green.

Will finally understand that the new neo-feudal society is now built and they are well f*ked up, too late to change anyway, as usual. Than we still see the reactionary cohort from today saying that we need to came back and the progressive ones saying that no the fault is having not done much more.

That's the real "ruse" (and not much a ruse, since countless think tanks have published black on white since years) but hybrid work is just a small step not specially linked with "the plot"...

alexashka• 4 years ago

The problem with offices is who they are filled with.

Solve for that problem.

spzb• 4 years ago

The thing that makes me laugh is that these managers insist on people coming into the office because "that's where they're more collaborative and creative". Before the pandemic they wanted to take us all off-site for an away day so we could be more collaborative and creative than when we were in the office!

oblio6• 4 years ago

Both can be true at the same time. A change or scenery and atmosphere can boost creativity.

kodah4• 4 years ago

Just leave. Most companies in high cost and high income areas are just doing this as a way to do layoffs, imo. My company recently announced that the three day work week, with hundreds of people asking how they were going to address the fact that our office is in Mountain View and that Staff+ engineers are having to get room mates so they can live less than an hour from the office. Our HR head basically said not my problem and then went on a lengthy discussion about the culture they wanted.

This is people's callousness reaching heights as people who were able to secure things like houses that are now worth millions and big cashouts in tech are coming to the height of their careers.

Melchizedek• 4 years ago

They want a "culture" while I'm worried about being able to put a roof over the head of myself and a family. That will surely build a great culture. Psychopaths.

The only thing they did to become millionaires was the completely non-productive act of borrowing money to buy property. Now the property values can't be allowed to depreciate so we must all commute into the office, the environment be damned. That's just inter-generational war.

kodah4• 4 years ago

I'd say less psychopath and more self-centered to a high degree. Folks that have been fed into prestigious schools, jobs, and general opportunities throughout their lives start to miss the smoke of what average folks deal with and go through. To them, the smoke blew away long ago, and the benefits they seek are often at competition with the benefits an average person might seek.

iso1210• 4 years ago

Any 2 days, or 2 named days?

If they want the entire company in for sat Tuesday and Wednesday, that could make sense - happenstance communications with people you don't normally talk to would probably be easier.

If your team lead wants you all in for a specific day for meeting etc that could make sense too. We're arranging a meeting + beers for mid May for example.

If it's any 2 days, then no, what's the point.

sanderjd4• 4 years ago

Personally I think where this is headed is self-sorting into fully remote and fully in person. I think smaller companies will want to choose one or the other, and that larger companies could perhaps choose at the level of fairly granular orgs. I think "hybrid" and having different options within a single team is unlikely to be a stable equilibrium.

ltbarcly3• 4 years ago

Obvious ruse. They want you in the office, they are going to get you in as much as they can now, and they fully already intend to then adjust it to as much as they can later. Boiling the frog.

francisofascii• 4 years ago

I think management wants to keep their options open. My company has been very vague about long term remote work plans. They clearly prefer that people come back to the office. They like being with people, and seeing dynamic office environments. But they also don't want to spook the employees into a mass exodus. So far they have set a mandatory two days a week policy, but it is not being enforced and less than half of the employees are following it. So as long as employees continue getting work done, it should stay.

IE6• 4 years ago

I'm in this right now and one big way this fails is that no one is on the same schedule. It's not uncommon for me to go into work only to join teams meetings anyway. I even stopped going to the room we all planned on meeting in because it would only be me in there anyway. The office furniture isn't that bad (somewhat modern, sit stand, somewhat ergo) so I can't complain but it doesn't compare to my setup at home - that's where the value prop suffers greatly.

twobitshifter• 4 years ago

I’m you from the future. We started on a hybrid office more than 4 months back. Hybrid was very weak with the requirement of 66% of the time in the office (1.5 days work from home?)

Management has recently reported that it’s failing and is signaling that people need to return to the office full time. This is absent the evidence of any failures (only allusions to kpis) and with many people already having refused to return to the office for even a fraction of the time for hybrid work. If the company shows stronger resolve the only end game is those people leaving or being let go by the company.

As another poster said individuals know the quality of their work and if they perform better remote or at work. The individuals doing well will never be convinced by management of the need to return.

jimmont2• 4 years ago

It's a political, power game. It simply shows lack of trust and regard for our time, or reflects inexperience and inability to manage. Otherwise the situation would speak for itself and the question wouldn't have been asked.

robotburrito• 4 years ago

Is remote work something that could lead to solidarity between engineers? Union demands?

valbaca2• 4 years ago

It's absolutely a "boil the frog" situation.

I already see it on my own team. First, there were "no expectations" to come into the office. Then, it would be "really nice" if everyone tried to come in on Wednesdays "but only if you want to!" Then it became "highly encouraged" for everyone to come in for the three-year brainstorming. Now we're encouraged to come in to meet the other team. And now we're being asked how many days we would be comfortable to come back. It'll be one day, then 2 days, then 4, and finally fully back in the office before you know it.

Despite EVERY metric showing that people are as-productive (and often more productive!) working from home, they just cannot stand the idea of not being able to enforce dress codes, and mandatory morning stand-ups, and being able to interrupt us and have us listen to the damn dog barking down the hall while someone's cell phone is going off because they forgot it and oh how do you get this conference phone to work I've only worked here for four years and make $500k can a techie person do this for me. I really really don't care about what you did over the weekend and don't want to hear about your kids when I'm just trying to get coffee or go to the bathroom.

fuck I hate the office and I know we're going to be 100% back before the end of the year.

And if anyone says "just leave" how about you try finding a Remote Job that is ACTUALLY Remote. Because I've not found a truly remote job. The "Remote" in posting is pure bait-and-switch.

drost• 4 years ago

I've been fully remote and out of state for ~8 months now. No expectation that I go into any office ever from my company... what kind of job are you looking for?

mouzogu4• 4 years ago

try finding a Remote Job that is ACTUALLY Remote

yeah I see this comment a lot. its not that simple for most of us to change jobs, for various reasons. not wanting to deal with 5 step leetcode interviews, not having access to the best job markets, having other commitments..

sircastor• 4 years ago

try finding a Remote Job that is ACTUALLY Remote. Because I've not found a truly remote job. The "Remote" in posting is pure bait-and-switch

I may be an outlier, but I did exactly that. My company was talking about coming back to the office (it was oscillating as COVID spikes came and went) and I started looking at roles elsewhere.

I did not interview with anyone who wasn’t legitimately, actually, remote I took a job last October for a company on the other side of the US. My manager is in Toronto. His manager is in Scotland.

It can be done. The companies are out there. I agree though, you need to be very specific upfront and make sure you’re getting what you want.

freedom20993• 4 years ago

I love working from home but I have to admit that at my company most innovations are born during coffee breaks! We have an amazing cafeteria with nice couches and rocking chairs were we spend at least an hour a day discussing stuff! Working in the office a couple of days a week allows us to do this but at the same time enjoy home!

june_twenty4• 4 years ago

What innovations are they? In my opinion, innovation comes from empowering people rather than chance meeting of minds in an office setting.

freedom20993• 4 years ago

New products, smart and more efficient solutions. Simply talking to other people and exchanging ideas helps! And I managed to do the same with some during full telework only because due to “in person” work I manage to establish a relationship with them (some of my best friends are among my colleagues). On the other hand I barely interacted with newcomers that joined after the full telework started. It’s only after having to be back a couple of days a week that I got to know them and started to interact with them as well. At my company they amended our contract to have permanently 3 days telework and 2 in the office (before the pandemic we already had 1 teleworking day). The days in the office are spent mostly socialising!

june_twenty4• 4 years ago

Yes it's a ruse. Covid is still around so I expect when it is really dead, companies will demand a proper return to office.

perrygeo2• 4 years ago

I worked at a company that was "hybrid" prior to the pandemic - deliberately, not because they were forced to be. 2 days in the office (same days for everyone) and 3 days remote. All meetings had a zoom link to support distributed work if you had to work from home for any reason. Some people worked in the office 5 days a week but they worked on hardware and shipping logistics, making presence a requirement.

It worked wonderfully. The two days in the office were full of ad hoc conversations, lunches, whiteboarding, pair programming .. all the stuff that's good about office work. The other 3 days a week, we stayed home and focused on building all the cool stuff we'd hashed out together with almost no interruptions. It was very much the best of both world, allowing both introverts and extroverts to thrive.

So hybrid working can turn out great IF it's a deliberate part of the culture. But in the general case of corporate America calling their workers back to the office, it does feel like a ruse.

julianlam• 4 years ago

Us too!

We end up back-loading all of our meetings and team discussions to Friday, which is our in-office day, and it works really well to ensure that the rest of the week can be free of distraction.

It takes commitment to intentionally defer items to the in-office day, so simply adopting a hybrid approach without doing anything additional is just cargo culting.

perrygeo2• 4 years ago

This sounds ideal (as an introverted IC programmer). But the discipline required to keep this schedule would require everything related to communication and decision making to be combined into a single day. I could imagine that being a source of tension among those that work at different paces - some wanting to move faster with more touchpoints, some slower with less. Either way, once or twice a week feels like a good "compromise".

dmitrygr• 4 years ago

Yes, to avoid instantaneous departures if they straight out came and said "office or GTFO" this lets them spread out the departures over a year or so, while various factions of people realize this and leave staggered over time.

lacker• 4 years ago

Personally, I think a schedule of 2 days in the office and 3 days wherever is pretty nice. You can regularly have important team meetings and 1-1s in person, you can get to know your coworkers face-to-face, but you can skip most of your commuting time.

Different people have really different opinions though and I completely understand there are some people who prefer 100% remote and some people who prefer 100% in-person. Who knows what sort of people your executives are. Maybe your management is just doing temporary appeasement. You'll just have to wait and see.

_benj• 4 years ago

I’m slightly suspicious about the “mandatory” hybrid model. I’ve been working remotely pre-Covid and I really like it. With that said, I recently visited the office and met some people that I’ve had diverging opinions… and I was completely sock to find out how much was lost during the conversation and how a short chat face to face clarified so much! I don’t think is enough to justify working from the office but I’m now planning to make it to the office something like every other month.

At the same time, even though I’m fully remote I’ll work from a coffee shop from time to time. Offices could become such company-provided hub/spaces for when a change of air, reliable internet, or access to physical resources (hardware) is needed.

maxharris• 4 years ago

Just refuse. Hold out for something better if you have any means to do so.

faangiq• 4 years ago

Of course it’s a scam. We’re stuck with it until the great boomer/xer die off hits.

Ask HN: Is Hybrid Working a Ruse?

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