I worked hybrid 18 at home, 22 at the office and it sucked.
It showed me three things:
• It showed me that I was far more productive when I was at home and I was comfortable and not distracted.
• It showed me that I was coming into the office for absolutely no logical reason (even while there, all discussion was via Slack and Zoom).
• It showed me that the company’s leadership was incompetent.
This wasn’t even a ‘we paid for the space, we have to use it’ issue. This was an office job at a light industrial facility where no one had to be in the office. If they didn’t have us come in, they could have knocked down the office area and put in another line or two. Just incompetence.
Which leads to the question, and its an honest question and I would benefit from the honest answer: If I can do the job hybrid, why can I not do the job remote? Is it because you needed me to move some paper boxes to the printer?
Coaching newbies doesn’t work that well remotely, so you’ll have to be at the office more for them to ask you questions, otherwise they’re stuck in the simplest things for days.
This is evidence that you need to adjust your training methods.
In my 20 years of working in the office and an additional 4 working 100% WFH, I’ll throw my worthless internet opinion out there as to why: It comes down to the culture of the company.
Some companies see a real benefit from water tank conversations, face-to-face meetings, and the ability for managers to ask someone in person on a moment’s notice to do things. There is also a lack of trust in the employees being able to perform correctly without physical oversight in many companies. Granted and aside from the trust issue, there is some truth to that, but can in fact be realigned with the exact same benefit by retooling communications. It’s up to each company however to formulate the best course of action to remedy that and many sadly fail, resulting in RTO mandates.
Some companies see a real benefit from water tank conversations
There are real benefits to water cooler spontaneous talk. However, they don’t overcome the detriments to having all your staff commute all the time on the off chance one will occur to produce a positive result.
face-to-face meetings, and the ability for managers to ask someone in person on a moment’s notice to do things.
These are largely dead in hybrid scenarios, because those that would be meeting face to face don’t work in the office on the same day. So the practical result to hybrid is the worker loses productivity from the commute to come into the office for one or two days an sits at a desk alone all day in video meetings with their coworkers just like they’d do at home. The next day their coworker does the same while the original worker is WFH that day.
Our company is doing the opposite and forcing everyone to RTW 5-days a week. Can’t wait for the exodus and the “I told you so”
There are a lot of great ones in here, but there’s another perspective I think should be added. For a long time, employees have been commoditized. We’re resources. Interchangeable. And that gives companies tremendous power.
WFH puts us on more even footing. There are entire cities supported by a single industry or even company. Now we aren’t limited geographically in who we can work for. If you’re toxic to work for, we can leave. It saps the power of the leadership to say “my way or the highway.”
I don’t think this is the secret underlying reason. I agree it’s real estate values that are mainly driving it, but I think this is absolutely part of it. Toxic leaders (and every company has them) are finding people are less willing to tolerate their bullshit because they aren’t over a barrel to the same degree. Still need universal healthcare to really break their back.
Yeah for quite some time I have been saying labor is priced artificially low. All of the barriers to finding a new job while working. All the risks of even short-term unemployment. Workers are already fucked by the power imbalance but without any liquidity in the labor market it’s so much worse. WFH adds liquidity, they hate it.
Yeah but we wanted to work from home not hybrid bullshit. This story is pandering like we won but they are still forcing me to go to an office every week for no good reason. This is just propaganda. The whole conversation in the thread has even shifted from talking about working at home full time to hybrid being ok. Insane
I don’t know why you think that’s all propaganda, i personally like hybrid work a lot more as well. I like my office, i like being able to go for a coffee with my colleagues and so on. I do like working from home as well - but i’m totally okay with being 1-2 days in the office. However, we do have people working 90% from home - they have to come in to the office though for various things they have to do. Printing large format plans, etc, etc. You can’t just assume 100% home full time works for everyone and shift the goalpost.
ITT people with drastically different ideas of what hybrid is.
Why do I feel like the next phase of this is changing the expectations of hybrid to be more like “9 in the office, 1 day from home”
There’s always a push, we just need to push back harder.
It seems like they pushed and there was nothing there to push because everyone had left. This is a case where the worker had options and it’s nice to see them use that to their advantage and encourage changes.
In other news…
“we lied and tried to force RTO because we wanted people to quit so we could avoid the bad-press of layoffs. They didn’t quit, we had to do layoffs to keep the stock price up because as a ceo I’m paid in shares. We’re done the layoffs for now and we enjoy skipping out on rent for office space.”
the place I work has tried RTO policies several times now - with very limited success. well over 90% of all white collar jobs can be done from wherever you can get internet so your VPN software will function. the customer facing part of the business has to be there 100% of the time, they dont have a choice, that’s how the business model is designed. I go in a few days a week but honestly dont ever actually need to be there. maybe 2 days a month, tops, is my presence absolutely required.
the really interesting bit, which the article didnt touch on (not much of an article to begin with) is that there is a commercial real-estate bubble. the big buildings in the downtown business district/cores of most cities, that real-estate isnt worth much if there’s no one renting the space. businesses that used to rent the space no longer need to because all of their employees work from home now. the people who invested in those big buildings are not seeing a return on their investments - and they are unhappy. that is, imho, a big driver behind the RTO movement.
the people who invested in those big buildings are not seeing a return on their investments - and they are unhappy. that is, imho, a big driver behind the RTO movement.
And those people are largely of the same class as the corporate executives and shareholders pushing RTO policies which ties a nice little bow on top of the whole situation. Rich people are losing money when employees work from home and so WFH has to go.
Given the housing crisis, it only makes sense to convert that real estate into residential units.
Those two are not as related as they at first seem.
For one, the plumbing required is different, as in literally offices don’t tend to have bathrooms with toilets and showers inside every office space. Also the lighting would be cut off for all the inside units. Communal bathrooms and no windows works for work but not as good for home.
For another, a lot of the varying housing crises (there are multiple types) relate to affordability bc of being bought up by corporate interests. Another type relates to weird zoning laws of what types of homes are allowed to be built in certain areas - and for these at least, there’s nothing stopping good homes from being made except again profits.
So it’s not impossible, but there are challenges. Mainly, how can already rich people find a way to make even moar monay? Oh yeah and something something the poors get whatever too.
Those residential units will be worthless too if all the offices close. Why live in the big city and pay huge rents if you work remote? Just move to a cheap area and buy a nice house.
Those huge rents exist because demand exceeds supply (amongst other reasons). People want to live in walkable neighborhoods and not suburbs where you have to drive everywhere to survive.
defeated broke millennial more disaffected for not being able to get past article paywall :(
btw, this here is a very nice extension called web archives
As it should be. Hybrid is the correct answer. Not full time RTO, not full time at home, Hybrid. The negotiation is in how hybrid should look, and will vary from situation to situation
There’s no one single “correct answer.” There are plenty of jobs where full time at home is just fine.
I have a real problem with hybrid for roles that don’t require an in-office presence because it arbitrarily region locks a role.
Hybrid is the worst of both worlds. You have to maintain an at-home office AND the office that is largely empty.
Hybrid is the worst of both worlds, you don’t meet your collegues when you’re at the office because they choose to be in on a different day, and you can’t live where ever in a similar timezone because you still need to be able to get to the office in a reasonable time.
Defeated? Wasn’t the aim full WFH?
Hybrid is a compromise that makes no sense to either party. The company still has to maintain an expensive office while being limited to the talent pool within commutable distance. The employee still has to waste countless (albeit fewer) hours travelling while being limited to job opportunities within ~20 miles of their residence.
Hybrid is always worse than either fully remote or fully in office. You end up with people coming into the office and sitting on Zoom or posting on Slack, and people at home missing out on conversations that don’t happen there. So you have to do twice as much work to keep everybody on the same page.
Hybrid does make sense. There are people who work better in an office ( like myself ) and there are people who are better working from home ( like my coworker ). The company i work for believes hybrid is the way to go so that you can supply an office for people like me, but also hire people who work remotely. However, nobody is saying you need to have an office that can house 100% of you employees. 60% is good enough as not everyone will be in the office at the same time. Money saved!
That said, some meetings are better to have in person so once in a while a required in person meeting is needed.
I believe in the words of my company : everyone, everywhere. And that includes an office or, which has happened, from working from spain, germany or thailand which are all remote locations in no way connected with the company. These were people who legit lived abroad or were looking after a vacation home of a friend
Congratulations you just cut your available employee pool down to…local access again. Hybrid is pointless and a waste of space and resources for less.
No meetings require in person. Get a white board and a camera if you can’t do in person meetings. It’s 2024, not 1975.
You mention 60% minimum, the second there’s a minimum then you can’t hire employees living far from an office or if you do you create two classes of employees.
Why should I RTO 60% of the time if they are ready to let others with the same job RTO 0% if the time? Just because I got unlucky and they happen to have an office less than X km away from where I live? How come I’m not allowed to move somewhere further away and get the same exemption then?
We call that discrimination and I’m not even getting into how it impacts women and POC more than white guys to have to RTO.
We have hybrid and it actually really works. We hire countrywide and if you don’t live near an office you are fully remote. But if you do live near an office you can go in anytime. I don’t like going to the office, but if I need to print or ship, or need to meet a client or coworker it’s nice to have the option. Also anytime I have an issue, I can pop in the office to check out new hardware, or work if my home is unsuitable due to whatever ( power outage, noisy maintenance, over 90 degrees since we don’t have AC, sick kid). However, I think hybrid only works if there is no minimum requirement on time in office. If it is at the teams discretion the home office becomes an amenity. We also downsized from something like 200 cubes to around sixty, so that helps too.
I think hybrid only works if there is no minimum requirement on time in office.
Then it’s not really hybrid, it’s actually fully WFH with the option to come in. Hybrid forces you to come in.
As someone who has WFH for the last 10 years, I do wish I could go into the office occasionally to have face to face meetings for large projects. Those are actually very useful for faster communication and effective for full understanding between groups in a way that video calls just can’t do. We are, after all, social animals and there is something about breathing the same air that can’t be beat.
I’ve worked from home for the past 10 years as well, and the face to face meetings don’t do anything for me, personally. With a job done entirely on a computer, I can’t think of anything that works better in person.
For perspective, I was 100% WFH for about 10 years. A couple of years ago I got a new job (huge compensation boost, and massive perks boost).
Lucky for me, which was one of the reasons I looked into it, my work is a 15 minute bike from where I live, they offer free breakfast and lunch every day, and a gym. So there are plenty of personal incentives for me to go into the office.
But what I find so surprising is that virtually everyone in my office thinks that hybrid is the best for productivity. Literally every person I’ve talked to about this agrees (quietly, of course, they don’t want to lose it) that the spontaneous meetings, the overhearing what other people are talking about (and jumping in with your own knowledge), the ability to quickly turn around and chat with another person, makes collaboration, and by extension productivity, way higher.
My biggest thing is that, as a senior software dev, the junior devs come to me for help quite frequently. When we’re in the office, I would say the average is about 3 times a day. When one or both of us is WFH, it probably doesn’t even average to one. There is something about sending a message or an email or requesting a zoom meeting that seems to be enough of a hurdle to ask what is a simple question. So they end up spinning their wheels a lot longer.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I get that WFH is a huge benefit to the employee. Which is why I did it for so long, with two young kids it was a god send to be home all the time if they needed to come because they were sick or if I needed to run out to the doctors with them. And, of course, commuting just absolutely blows (I think that’s the biggest drawback of any non-FWFH schedule). So I do support it.
However, I think we need to be realistic about its benefits. Companies want people back in the office because, generally speaking, people are more productive.
You realize that you’re experiencing massive selection bias right?
A) it’s not very socially acceptable to talk about how much you’d rather be at home with your cat than here talking with this colleague.
B) everyone you work with chose a hybrid job.
i.e. “People who choose to work a hybrid job think hybrid is better”
Or in your case, “people who get to go into a big tech office with free meals and gyms and laundry think it’s better to go into the office”.
Try working a hybrid job where you commute 45min each way, and still have to cook yourself three meals a day and then come back and tell us whether you think hybrid is really more productive. I spent a year at a MAANG firm as a contractor and got to go to their head campus near SF and thought ‘damn, if this was what working was like, I could more easily see myself going into the office’, then I returned to my home city and went to their office their and saw the stale muffins that were breakfast and remembered the whole rest of my career and what companies are like and returned to the real world.
Yes, I understand the hurdle in asking people questions, but quite frankly that is addressable through numerous ways from zoom office hours, to better team rituals and culture, to slack bots, occasional meetups, or just plain old fashioned pair programming… all methods that cost far less and cause far less disruption to people’s lives then forcing in them into an office 3 days a week.
And you know what else is more productive for a company? Having everyone working 60 hour weeks in the office all the time. Who. the. fuck. cares. We live in a world with literal billionaires. Working more doesn’t make the world a better place it enriches assholes who never learned how to share or be happy with what they have.
