We forced our company to allow work from home again

https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/16j8kw4/we_forced_our_company_to_allow_work_from_home/

by belltaco • 3 years ago

98 110 3 years ago

old.reddit.com

athorax• 3 years ago

...and then everyone cheered?

But seriously, this just doesn't add up. I could see the company folding once they realize that they were dependent on the tribal knowledge of those leaving, but claiming to not get any applications is absurd.

curiousllama• 3 years ago

eh, this feels like a miscommunication/exaggeration.

More realistic is that it took time for HR to communicate up the chain what was happening; they posted the jobs in the interim; the ads didn't get enough applicants to confidently turn over ~50% of IT in 1 week (obviously); OP interpreted this as "they got 0 applicants and folded"

NoMoreNicksLeft• 3 years ago

You're in California or Washington I'm betting. I'm in Texas, in a part of the state that definitely leans towards being "fly-over" more than it does towards being the title of a well-known 1980s prime time soap opera.

We could definitely do that, and not receive any local applicants for a week. Maybe longer. The few we might receive would be woefully underqualified.

If they're in (or just outside of) some minor midwest city, the same's true for them too.

Everything I've said is true a hundredfold if there's no university in that minor city.

adrianmonk• 3 years ago

From that Reddit account's comment history, they're probably in Portugal.

I don't know what the tech scene is like there. It might be OK, but I don't think it is known as a tech hub.

FirmwareBurner• 3 years ago

But seriously, this just doesn't add up.

Please do take everything you read on reddit with a pinch of salt. Reddit stories are more like Netflix documentaries, regulare stories, that are over-dramatized for the sake of views.

terminous• 3 years ago

it's a typical reddit creative fiction

chasd00• 3 years ago

I help a team that just this week was ordered from on-high to come into the office 4 days a week. Their product is on time and they just released v1 to rave reviews while working remote. Every single person on the team is now actively looking at other offers (they're good and their skills are very in demand). I've never seen an unforced error like this, total self destruction. I've been besides myself all week, never seen such a poor move by leadership ever. The entire project is going to be in serious trouble in about 3 weeks. It makes no sense.

/I'm not aligned to their organization (i'm just an SME/liason on the project) so the return to office order doesn't affect me or i would be doing the same.

paulusthe• 3 years ago

I think it's personality differences. The people who love being in the office probably do best in that environment and likely got promoted into leadership as a result of their interpersonal skills / ability to navigate office politics. Those people cannot fathom why others would dislike going into the office, because it's so natural and normal for them, and they tend to think people complaining about it are just being kind of immature children. After all, the office has been great for them, so it's gotta be great for everyone!

I think it's an introvert extrovert split, primarily, with extroverts more likely to be in leadership roles and therefore dictating to everyone else to live like they do.

joelfried2• 3 years ago

Personality differences are certainly a piece of it, sure.

But if the folks On High do not realize what the people doing the actual work value about their current position, that seems like a pretty big failure of leadership. If you don't understand the needs of those following you, you're not doing a good job leading.

taylodl2• 3 years ago

I think it's an introvert extrovert split, primarily, with extroverts more likely to be in leadership roles and therefore dictating to everyone else to live like they do.

And the introverts are sick of it. They see the mess so-called "leadership" has created - from the corporate level clear up to the national level. Incompetence and corruption is running amok throughout the world and people are sick of it. They're also sick of being forced to work and live in ways solely intended to protect the wealth of others.

2muchcoffeeman• 3 years ago

I don’t think extroversion makes you a moron though.

They took a look at what appear to be fantastic results and came to the conclusion that, “we should fix things”.

biggc• 3 years ago

I personally enjoyed _work_ more in person than remote, but I enjoy my life overall more with remote work. I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels that way.

If you’re in a leadership position, what are you supposed to optimize for?

pizza• 3 years ago

Hang on.. while I get that you mean "feel a sense of comfort/security in personal social situations" by interpersonal skills - and I agree with that characterization of what's going - I just want to say that not being able to even imagine an alternate preference is quite indicative of rather poor interpersonal skills, imo - it's un-collaborative, un-curious, un-empathetic, unnecessarily combative and short-sighted, etc. Typically associated with a bad leadership style that avoids taking responsibility for making things worse for others.

jedberg• 3 years ago

I think you're mostly right, but I'm not sure the split is extrovert/introvert. I think it's more "I like my kids/family/home life" vs not.

I'm in technical management and would probably be considered an extrovert by engineering standards. I'm really good at navigating office politics. And I hate the office. But that's because I like my family, I like hanging out with my wife at home and my kids, and I have a great office setup at home with windows and big screens and snacks and such.

The people who I see that enjoy going to the office are either young people who live alone and/or in small places, and old people who talk crap about their spouse and kids during lunch and have an obvious disdain for them.

Well there are also the "I had to do it for my whole career, so you can suffer now too" crowd, although most of those people also seem to hate their family.

tmpX7dMeXU2• 3 years ago

In the interest of fairness, you could reverse your whole comment and it would still ring true.

Not to say that you are implying it yourself, but when these points are usually made, it comes with an implication that the “extroverts” are seeking to perform some sort of superfluous duty, or something that is at the very least leaser.

Again, in the interest of fairness, anyone that isn’t able to see that WFH presents genuine challenges for leadership that aren’t just about “micromanaging”, “butts in seats”, or “feeling important”, really needs to dig deeper.

Speaking from the perspective of someone that recently had to build a small team from scratch entirely remotely, it has certainly been harder to build momentum, culture, rapport, etc remotely. These things are all important and all materially affect productivity. Onboarding is substantially harder. I had a severely underperforming team member (my standards aren’t terribly high, he interviewed really well, and I’m almost certain he was trying snd failing at over-employment), and working remotely turned it from essentially a non-issue into a months-long ordeal.

This incessant tribalism by esp. developers over the topic of remote work is ridiculously childish.

re-thc• 3 years ago

After all, the office has been great for them, so it's gotta be great for everyone!

Except they themselves don't even go to the office that often or come and go as they please. It's not the same.

dogman1442• 3 years ago

Got nothing to do with introvert extrovert imo. It’s got to do with “I like my home life and family more than a commute and can digitally be extroverted enough for office politics” and those that can’t/don’t.

I’m an eng on a leader path, have a strong background in leadership, and like people well enough.

There’s nothing stopping you from being an extroverted leader in a digitally-defined environment. It’s easy, it works. Be social-ish, be professional but casual, be friendly, produce output, and soon enough you start winning at tech leadership - produce output on high vis projects (what matters/is seen in remote-first), and be seen doing it and have “friends” (as in, banter on slack a bit - the other part that matters, people need to like you).

If you’ve grown up in chatrooms, text message first (so, born early 90’s and after), the argument that to be extroverted means to be in-person is nonsensical.

You just have to take these digital social skills, wrap a bit of professionalism on it, and you’ll do fine climbing (if that’s what you want).

So more accurately - it’s a split around people who know how to build IRL outcomes via digital context and also like their IRL home lives, and those that can’t and don’t.

UtopiaPunk• 3 years ago

I don't think it's quite as simple as extrovert/introvert, but otherwise I would agree that there's probably a strong correlation between individuals who like being in an office with individuals who become managers.

I think I'm pretty extroverted in social circumstances where I feel comfortable. But I'm energized by topics that tend to not be great in the workplace (broadly speaking, religion and politics), so in the workplace I usually keep my head down. My workplace has said they want people to bring their "whole self" to work, but work is absolutely not a safe place for my whole self, so in the workplace I have the behavior more of an introvert. WFH is definitely the way to go for me.

hedora3• 3 years ago

If you are paid in stock, you might want to find the lowest common manager between the two teams, and ask for an org-wise raise for your side (due to morale issues, and lower expectations for business growth 12 months from now).

sys_64738• 3 years ago

It only takes one misstep to destroy the goodwill a company has. Why they shoot themselves in the head with unilateral demands like this is a head scratcher. Company bigwigs like to believe they can dictate culture until they're forced to scramble to save face. But by then most have disengaged.

mouzogu• 3 years ago

story seems a bit fantasy to me. not sure if it's really plausible.

they all resigned together but the company couldn't find anyone to replace them on linkedin. doesn't correlate with my experiences.

in any case would be interesting to know if something like this did happen. i think maybe only in smallish companies where employees have some leverage.

in my experience it seems they started treating remote as a more of a one-off privilge, or as a reward. it's no longer seen as a permanent benefit.

bombcar• 3 years ago

Any job opening seems to get a billion weird applicants, so if they really got NONE they either are lying (everyone clapped) or they mean "zero qualified" but even that seems unlikely.

jstarfish• 3 years ago

It reads like a rehashing of the pretext for hiring H1-Bs instead of domestic employees-- they're trying to use RTO resistance as the reason now.

yjftsjthsd-h• 3 years ago

they all resigned together but the company couldn't find anyone to replace them on linkedin.

I would believe that they got zero real applications if the company was underpaying and had a decent number of skilled people who were there out of inertia, which would also account for them all being able to find other jobs quickly. It takes a particular culture, but I've seen things close enough to believe that that could happen.

ryanSrich2• 3 years ago

they all resigned together but the company couldn't find anyone to replace them on linkedin. doesn't correlate with my experiences.

Yeah this was a clear sign the post was fake. Even entry level posts on LinkedIn will get a few hundred applicants in day. Leave it up for a week and you might have over 1,000. This is the case for anywhere in the US. Could be the smallest most rural town in the US. If you make a job post requiring in office work there you’ll still get hundreds of applicants.

marcosdumay3• 3 years ago

Well, AFAIK everything there could easily be just invention. But depending on where the company is hosted, I could believe that happened too.

It's not like a small company on the middle of nowhere ever had an easy time getting people to apply.

yieldcrv3• 3 years ago

on the other side of this, I’ve only been considered after the technical interview at the one company I did an onsite with.

Something about me doesn’t come across in remote interviews. But my “culture fit” and competence distortion field still works in person. Just like pre pandemic

My current job was “once or twice a week onsite” but has been once or twice a month

gedy• 3 years ago

Something about me doesn’t come across in remote interviews.

If you don't mind me asking, are you physically attractive? People do behave differently around nice looking folks, especially in person.

I have the opposite problem of I look better on (zoom) camera than in person (not really in shape, etc).

yieldcrv3• 3 years ago

are you physically attractive?

If I brag about my intimate experiences with women, people say its because I’m 6’1” tall, lean, nice jawline and everything that has nothing to do with what I did.

If I complain about any aspect of my relationships with women that I found frustrating, people say I’m an incel, “yikes”, not physically attractive enough compared to a more extreme scarce version of man, and also critiquing everything that I did whether I specified or not.

So, you tell me. I don’t have much consensus since my experience is invalidated by default.

CoastalCoder3• 3 years ago

Just curious, did in-person vs. remote interviews correlate with the position being in-person vs. remote?

I could believe that for a fully remote position, you're competing with a much larger applicant pool.

yieldcrv3• 3 years ago

in person interview for hybrid role.

I began pushing for onsite interviews on a hunch

I can think of a lot of quantum reasons, but more importantly I wasn’t getting job offers and couldn't find anybody to relate (most discussion I found was about not getting a call back, I pretty much always got to technical interview and then got unceremonious rejections)

So I pushed for onsite and did a classic whiteboard technical interview, the first one sent me an offer. I answered as well or as poorly as every other procedurally generated technical interview. After dozens of other companies all I have is the 100% correlation to going onsite.

Is what it is. Might help someone else.

Workaccount2• 3 years ago

I feel like the work from home conversation gets weird? different? when you are talking about tech jobs, and makes it a totally different situation.

It's easy to make a case for WFH when your job is basically "Work alone for 90% of the time hitting keys on a keyboard". Hell there are tech workers who are going on 20 years of remote work. WFH is an old concept in tech, because the work is almost custom tailored for it.

HN is out here hitting softballs in the battle over retrun to work. However, the overwhelming majority of white collar workers are not tech workers, and do jobs that require way more human interaction. This is where the actual strain between workers and employers is.

hotnfresh3• 3 years ago

A lot of office workers have jobs that are mostly talking on the phone plus data entry. Lots of those are, if anything, even easier to do remotely than most tech jobs. And much easier to measure productivity!

Those employers also tend to be pushing RTO.

ebiester3• 3 years ago

It's not as different as you think it is.

Most people got used to zoom meetings and async interactions, and they too liked it more than open offices. Big companies have it worse - they have the cubicles/open offices and their coworkers are in other offices throughout the country. This is all too common, and WFH made life much easier on everyone.

This was less true for executives, who were suddenly on 10 hours of zoom calls a day, and whose jobs are most affected. I truly think they forgot that ICs have a very different life than them.

michaelteter• 3 years ago

Perhaps the problem for execs is their focus on meetings. I would bet that at least 25% of meetings don’t have to be live, multi person events.

Async communication can be more effective when it causes people to think a bit before talking.

pydry2• 3 years ago

I dont think anybody really likes zoom meetings more. They just like the perks of WFH 10x more than they dislike zoom meetings.

alexanderchr• 3 years ago

10h of zoom calls per day sounds like absolute hell, from that perspective I can really understand why leadership is pushing for RTO

makeitdouble2• 3 years ago

To note, human interaction does not equal work from office either.

A decent portion of the white collar workforce is sales. Lawyers and accountants, recruiters, real estate agents can also be traveling a lot and/or work at places that are not their offices.

I'd also argue customer support shouldn't need to be done in sweatshop style offices, though weak connectivity could be an issue in more decentralized settings.

singleshot_4• 3 years ago

Lawyer here; my office is a paradise and working outside of it is a huge drag. Who is going to teach me stuff or make my binders at my house? Am I supposed to be meeting with clients in my kitchen? Where am I supposed to keep all my case materials? Am I supposed to provide my own food?

I really think the key here is that VC has spent twenty years convincing you IT people that “the office” is a floor in a skyscraper with 400 cubicles and no walls or doors or services. If your office actually had any of the redeeming factors of an office, you might feel a little differently, no?

singleshot_4• 3 years ago

Strongly agree. My (no tech) job would barely even be possible at my house because of the impossibility of any kind of informal or spontaneous interaction with someone from whom I need to learn. This leaves aside the fact that I want to be able to set some boundaries. A short drive is worth it to have a separate, quiet space to work.

The IT world really made a mistake by creating a space that’s so unpleasant that it’s easier to work at home. I think if a significant share of tech workers had an office with a door we would not be having this wfh rto conversation.

JohnFen2• 3 years ago

The IT world really made a mistake by creating a space that’s so unpleasant that it’s easier to work at home.

Yes. And it utterly baffles me! Even when employers were making an effort to improve the office environment, they did so in a way that didn't address the problems with it at all. Instead, they went for "perks" like game rooms, free snacks, etc. All of which are entirely orthogonal to what makes working in an office a terrible experience.

softfalcon• 3 years ago

Yup. Joel from Joel On Software covered this years ago. He made sure all devs have a quiet, private office, with window and door.

The problem is, it’s cheap to just throw desks together in an empty room and call it a “fish bowl” or “open office section”.

Most companies don’t care that it affects morale, productivity. Just that they were able to seat 5 more people with a cheap trip to IKEA.

Can’t stop people taking the lazy, easy alternative.

ianmcgowan• 3 years ago

In the corporate world I've seen (across many countries and cultures) there is no such thing as a "separate, quiet space to work" unless you're fairly senior. The irony of course is that fairly senior folks are on zoom/teams/webex calls 12 hours a day and quiet introspection isn't part of the job.

The common pushback from employees forced into RTO is they are commuting to a significantly worse environment where they still just sit in teams calls all day.

hedora3• 3 years ago

Yeah. If I ever return to office, I’m going to demand an office with opaque walls and an opaque door.

Windows are fine; door will be open much of the time. It will be closed when I’m doing algorithm design, trying to plan out an N step refactoring to get some rust code to compile, or napping.

I noticed that some of the millenuals / gen z’ers in the old bull pen (16 person cubicle) would just shamelessly sleep at their desks in the afternoon. I occasionally nod off when reading, but this was full-on pillow on keyboard stuff.

So, I’ve decided the stigma around napping in the afternoon is misplaced.

wink3• 3 years ago

On the risk of sounding ridiculously entitled, I'm not sure that helps. As someone kinda sensitive to being disturbed by people talking, the only solution would be an office with a door for every person, or maybe 2 people. Four is too much already and the others can't be pairing or it will distract. But four is not really better than 10, but I suppose the actual noise level would differ for every person. Also unrelatedly I find screensharing so much better than looking over someone's shoulder, or sitting in the same room as someone in the same virtual meeting. I guess I should use noice canceling headphones?

That said, I've never seen single offices for normal software developers here in Germany at any company I ever worked at, so the point is kinda moot. I'm also not sure I'd like it, because where's the benefit if I am walling myself off?

And then it's the question of equipment. Companies are either too stingy or too homogenized. Either I have better screens/chair at home because the company is skimping in general or I have better stuff because I chose what I want and not what was decided to be good.

hedora3• 3 years ago

A friend is in sales, and went on leave at the beginning of covid.

They spent a long time getting dressed to sales standards for their first zoom call after coming back, and found that everyone had moved to just keeping the video off.

Sweat pants for the win!

(I get the impression productivity also increased, since their team also spent much less time driving across town when a phone call work suffice.)

mabbo• 3 years ago

do jobs that require way more human interaction

And all of these interactions are fully possible in remote work. You just need to use the tools that support it- like normalizing video calls (with video on!).

The only reason we see so much "we all need to go back to the office" is that some senior leaders don't like this way of communicating, aren't used to it, and therefore everyone else must be in person as well.

pydry2• 3 years ago

Even tech jobs aren't really like that. I spend at least 1/3-1/2 of my day discussing the best way to do things, training people up, managing priorities, negotiating over openapi schemas, etc.

I did have one job where we only spent 20 minutes a day doing that and the results were not impressive.

hiyer• 3 years ago

Sales is pretty similar too - although they don't work from "home", they don't need to show up to office so much. I used to work at a small firm where our office was divided into two floors; and the second floor was just me and two salespersons. I used to be alone probably 15+ out of 20 working days of the month because the salespersons were out meeting prospects and customers so much.

foobiekr• 3 years ago

Honestly it's not really "tech jobs."

Even in software, there are some kinds of SW and development and timelines that are easy to do all or mostly remote. These tend to also be the kinds of work that, if not for language barriers, kind of offshore easily. They tend to involve mastery of a framework but otherwise mostly being a lot of glue code.

This is not true for all kinds of software and I think people really underestimate how important it is for some kinds of software to be arguing in front of a whiteboard and/or with massive schematics sitting out and so on or having different people drop in, quickly establish context, and reason through things.

I think a lot of HN tends to be - like most of the industry - basically web apps. Those don't have any problems with communications bandwidth or shared context because a lot of it is on rails and is mostly not interesting to discuss outside the user flows discussions around the UI. But that isn't true for a lot of software or high-value software.

sarchertech• 3 years ago

There are successful examples of almost every kind of software you can think of that have been developed remotely, so I’m not sure it’s web development specific.

Even with software that is ostensibly developed by a team in an office, is frequently worked on by employees in different offices.

kklisura• 3 years ago

WFH introduced during covid really tip the scales of power dynamics between employees and employer.

chii• 3 years ago

Just like the black plague did too. Silver linings?

1270018080• 3 years ago

The WFH conversation, especially on HN, has been beaten to death. I’ve heard every viewpoint 1000 times. There is nothing else to say let’s just ban the topic.

Blackthorn• 3 years ago

While you might be the main character of your own life, you are not the main character of the world.

CoastalCoder3• 3 years ago

I kind of agree, but this story was about a new (alleged) data point.

Personally, as a job seeker, I'm interested in any new changes to the WFH landscape.

hkt• 3 years ago

The workers united will never be defeated!

Good for them. They should unionise really, but actions like this are incredible and admirable. It is very heartening to see any group of workers defend themselves and their working conditions like this.

Invictus0• 3 years ago

No one would just go on the internet and tell lies, would they?

nixpulvis2• 3 years ago

Can this culture war please be over. I’m sick of it.

CoastalCoder3• 3 years ago

In what sense do you mean "culture war"?

Just asking because people usually use the term specifically for conservative vs. liberal belief clusters. So I'm not sure if you're saying WFH is tied into that culture war.

nixpulvis2• 3 years ago

That’s another one that would be nice to mello out.

aaomidi• 3 years ago

This is when you form a union too. So they can’t take that away from you randomly in the future. You’re already nearly there too!

eddtests2• 3 years ago

There’s a fun anecdote about Bell Labs where an electrical engineer, Nyquist, was found to be one of the connecting points for patent output in the company. Having lunch with him seems to have outputted greater numbers of patents. I know there’s going to be so many other factors but I know I’ve learnt a lot from hanging with colleagues over lunch or at the pub, what’s the replacement to that?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Nyquist

milesvp• 3 years ago

I know a guy like this. He was once employed to wander around talking with other engineers of different specialties. He has a habit of looking at things from first principles. And talking to him would invariably get you unstuck on some problem, often by sidestepping it completely. At the very least they’d end up with interesting directions to spend effort on.

He’s an absolutely fascinating person to talk to.

iwonthecase• 3 years ago

I don't understand why companies can be so self destructive when it comes to this kind of stuff. I had a brief stint at a place that mandated a full RTO early 2021, started time tracking people, publicly screamed at coworkers that showed up five minutes late, wrote up employees for wearing masks, fired people that made ADA requests, etc.

Cult-y startup, but still.

richie_adler2• 3 years ago

wrote up employees for wearing masks

That would have been my cue to start polishing my CV.

eddtests2• 3 years ago

Or suing for a nice pay check - I am not the most Covid-conscious person, but if I had time tracking AND a potentially illegal activity I’d sue

afavour4• 3 years ago

Wasn't it just yesterday that a bunch of HN folk were saying they didn't see any reason for tech workers to belong to a union?

ryanSrich2• 3 years ago

I’d much rather the free market figure this out. If I want to change my company from being remote to in office I should have that power. Employees should have the power to quit, which they already do.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF• 3 years ago

A union is a manifestation within a free market. A bunch of employees get together so they can quit with more impact.

skadamou• 3 years ago

Lately, I've come to the conclusion that WFH tends to benefit older devs with more experience at the expense of their younger colleagues. If you are established/experienced and already have a strong network in your field, working from home is great because it gives you more flexibility and less distractions from your work. If you're a junior dev however, working from home creates a higher barrier to asking questions/learning from more experienced folks on your team and also negatively impacts your ability to network/meet people in your field.

I'm sure that this is super situational dependent but on the whole I think it negatively impacts junior devs but I would love to hear some other people's thoughts.

wink3• 3 years ago

Yes and no.

I personally don't see a lot of difference in pairing remotely over sitting next to each other, as someone with a non-standard keyboard and layout I actually find it a lot easier, because I can watch and do some doc reading/research/tickets during that.

If you are more hands-off and don't engage with your younger colleagues, then yes, absolutely.

I don't really know how you would just magically absorb knowledge and not wasting all your time if you listened to everything that everyone in your physical vicinity says. (Including cursing, talking about sportsball results, etc.pp) But maybe people who are good at listening while doing something else see this differently.

What I do miss are the coffee break conversations, hopefully also with people from other teams and not only your own, but I think this can be remedied by going to the office occasionally, certainly not something I need on a daily basis.

comte7092• 3 years ago

At the end of the day, wfh is a serious benefit for workers.

“Return” to office can’t just be seen as a return to “normal”, it’s effectively a pay/benefit cut.

If you’re going to cut my pay for non performance related reasons, you better know that you’re completely destroying your credibility with me.

The merits of the gains to productivity, whether true or not, don’t really matter. Cutting salaries across the board benefits the company similarly. You can’t spin that as a positive to the individual employee.

scopeh• 3 years ago

If you went back to the office, then would you rather an open planned office or your own cubicle? If its the latter, your own cubicle, then why the hell are you going back to the office?

Open planned offices are a pain the arse for distractions.

I for one couldn't imagine going back, far more productive WFH.

avgcorrection• 3 years ago

When employers force employees to upend their lives or get fired: no one blinks

When an IT department forces a small (?) company to do something by quitting: That seems way too fantastical to be true.

(Personally... yes, seems a bit too good to be true!)

And HN wonders why some people want unions.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37507458

We forced our company to allow work from home again

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