I have yet to work for a company that buys me lunch, much less annual ski trips. Hell, coffee hasn't been provided at any of my jobs, I've always had to pitch into a coffee pool just to have it. That's not to even mention getting to go to conferences. If I wanted to attend a conference, it would be coming out of my wallet and vacation time.
If you want me to collaborate, put it in on my schedule and pay me to do it. I'd say that most of these "spontaneous collision of people and ideas" happen during lunch. Guess what, that lunch which I am already paying for, is also unpaid time. Ever since I've been working from home, my lunch hour is mine. I get to unwind, read or watch tv, all while eating a healthy meal.
Finally let's talk about things that would get me back in the office. Shorter days, I have to commute a total of 2 hours a day, so I want my day to be 2-3 hours shorter. An actual office, with a window, door, temperature control, and some kind of noise isolation. I don't like working in those open office bullpens where I get to listen to salesmen screaming on the phone or secretaries sharing the latest gossip. Start screening people for personal hygiene. I get so tired of having to work with a heavy smoker or someone who can't be bothered to shower before showing up to work.
According to his Linkedin link, Charlie graduated in 2012 and went straight to work for Google, where he worked for 7 years. My hypothesis is that essentially everyone he knows after graduating, he met at Google.
Me, I've got friends and relatives. I've got stuff to do. For me, going to work does not equal hanging out with my buddies.
Oh, here's another one: the last time I worked in the office, my cubicle was directly across the hall from apparently the only large, not-completely-booked-up meeting room at MSFC. At least once a week I was up closing the goddamn meeting room door.
Do you work in software? I have never heard of a software company not providing free coffee. The increased productivity completely outweigh the couple dollars for the hot bean water.
Closest I've come to no office coffee at a tech company is one that just had a Keurig machine and the very cheapest K-cups they could find. The only ones that even had a flavor were the ones labeled "dark roast", and that flavor was very bad. I'm pretty sure an electric kettle and a jar of instant coffee would have given better results. That place had 500 people and was growing fast. Nowhere near SV, though.
traditional drip coffee and shelf stable creamer was the norm when I started.
Big tech is not all "free" and perks, and it depends dramatically on company or even just the division. There's the the big one of Google, with all its free food, etc but the other big tech don't do that - they have accumulated some free snacks and sodas, etc in recent years but they still basically charge for all food from the cafeterias. The free food at Google or startup-land isn't a huge selling point in practice - it simply is not worth much relative to the salary/wage comp.
This is unheard of inside the Silicon Valley bubble. In our defense, it also doesn’t make sense that an employer doesn’t provide it for free. Coffee is cheap. It also adds productivity.
One reason some companies dont is because they have significant NON tech work force also in the same building, and they dont want to provide perks for X that they dont for Y in the same building.
If the first 3 stories of your building are call center level employees who make barely better than minimum wages and the top floor is your well paid software engineers, then facilities just says "no free coffee" to everyone.
Though even in places that you would think would be stingy give out free coffee and snacks more and more. Most of the purse string people like having nice snacks too. Even small business owners will cater meals and buy nice coffee because they get to have a nice meal that counts as a business expense and their premium coffee blend they get on order and have every day gets to count as one too at that point.
A Stinging reminder that if your company is not primarily a tech company, IT is a cost center; the perks there are for normie employees and not to retain tech talent
Then you're not looking very far outside your own bubble, because as someone like OP who doesn't have the pleasure of working in top tech companies in silicon valley, I never had free coffee at any place I had to show up at.
Heck, even being paid decently at those places was far fetch let alone all those perks.
To elaborate the biggest "tech" company I worked at where I had to show up was John Deere. They had coffee, but it was just a Starbucks directly in JDIS (the "department" that handled software dev) and you had to pay to get a cup.
I've worked at a few places where the provided "free" coffee was just what one of us decided to bring in and share in the kitchen.
I have also yet to work anywhere where the added "agitation" of getting folks talking in the kitchen wasn't the largest benefit of having said kitchen. (That is, productivity was probably lower, but it increased the odds of a productive conversation happening. Nothing guaranteed, of course.)
Interestingly, Atlassian (somewhat) famously didn't have coffee. They offered free breakfast and lunch, unlimited ice cream, more booze than you'd ever want, etc. But their philosophy with coffee was that they wanted you to form groups and leave the office for a few minutes a couple of times a day. It was supposedly a method of bonding and spontaneous collaboration. In my opinion it worked well.
My time at Dell immediately brought this to mind. No coffee offered other than overpriced you had to purchase from the cafeteria. I brought in my own espresso and coffee maker, and got chastised by facilities as a fire hazard. We weren't even allowed to put in the tiny kitchenette, which was a sink with plastic utensils in a couple of drawers. Ridiculous.
Hacker news was built by silicon valley tech people, has a lot of silicon valley tech people posting. The author doesn't need to write for every single possible constituency. Also, many other industries provide lunch etc - historically many mining and oil and gas companies provided food, housing, everything. Some still do. The author wrote in good faith.
There are a lot of people at google who don't come from privileged backgrounds. They might have won an iq lottery or something, but someone working hard to get a job at a good company doesn't make them privileged. What's next? Elon is "privileged"?
I generally avoid even talking about him due to his rapid followers but uh… yes, Elon Musk’s father is “so rich we couldn’t close our safe” and it’s hilarious you chose him - of all people - to argue against privilege instead of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, literally anyone of more modest upbringing but you chose the actual one with family money.
Regardless, I don’t think OP was referring to privileged upbringing/background but privileged currently e.g. privileged for working at a place which provides many amenities and trips. I agree with your first paragraph, i.e. everyone can only write from their own perspectives, but just clarifying the difference.
Bill Gates dad was a hotshot lawyer. Buffett's dad was a congressman. All of them had nice backgrounds. They don't fly private jets and live in mansions because of that background - they worked like maniacs. People can have nice things without it being "privilege"
I'm not an Elon Musk fan, but the impression I get is that both 'sides' exaggerate (or misunderstand) his family background. It seems - from what I've read - that his dad was the kind of slightly-mad entrepreneur who had money at points and no money at other points. I don't think they were stupendously rich.
Mines I have worked at in the US only provided meals when you were travelling. Although unlimited double brew and a plugin for every truck/car in the parking lot was provided. Can't speak for oil and gas.
on that, I've only ever worked at one company that provided free coffee (a large bank). And quite frankly, it being in Melbourne, Australia, only the absolutely desperate would touch it and not just go outside to cafes for meetings and buy their own at their own cost.
I also did some work experience at tidbinbilla tracking station when I was younger, as well as the radio telescope array out near Narrabri. the NASA aligned tidbinbilla one had a company cafeteria, which at the time I put down to some American cultural import thing, because it seemed weird as hell to me. the Narrabri facility isn't exactly in the middle of the city either, and is the only place I've worked with a bus that came round to pick you up from the town each morning (I've heard some tech companies do this in Silicon Valley?) and even they expected you to make your own lunch (there wasn't really an option to go get food from a shop). on the upside, they did have a volleyball court, so swings and roundabouts...
It’s not really a privilege. Google (especially the Chrome team) is extremely high impact work. Think of all the revenues funneled into search thanks to it. It’s deep, fundamental tech at a tech company and a core part of the strategy.
> I have yet to work for a company that buys me lunch, much less annual ski trips. Hell, coffee hasn't been provided at any of my jobs, I've always had to pitch into a coffee pool just to have it. That's not to even mention getting to go to conferences. If I wanted to attend a conference, it would be coming out of my wallet and vacation time.
That’s a series of red flags. Why did you even go work there in the first place? Are the founders unable to raise anything?
> Guess what, that lunch which I am already paying for, is also unpaid time. Ever since I've been working from home, my lunch hour is mine. I get to unwind, read or watch tv, all while eating a healthy meal.
Are you in consulting? Only place I heard of with billable hours.
If it’s a regular company with FTE, with a mentality like that regarding collaboration it sounds like they sure aren’t a threat to anyone in SV.
I agree on the open office plans (excuse to cram more people in a space) but a decent cube setup isnt all that bad (assuming decently high walls).
Not sure how a company buying you lunch makes you privileged - mine does not but many bigger companies provide that as a perk and it is not super uncommon or something.
FWIW, I definitely don't deny that my privilege is showing.
I no longer work at Google, but whether I want to go into the office is probably heavily influenced by the fact that I have a ~15 minute door to door bike commute through a nice town (Ann Arbor) to my nice coworking space.
I think that the scary part to me about the idea of all jobs going remote is that "going remote" seems an antidote to:
- Bad office designs (no privacy, poor light, etc.)
- Bad urban planning (long commutes, poor transportation options)
- Bad coworkers
Of those three, only the "bad coworkers" one seems inevitable that some people will have to deal with. (After all, those people need to work somewhere.)
If I had to commute two hours a day to work in an office with no privacy, my opinion on this would surely be different. One of the people on my team at Google lived in Oakland and commuted to Mountain View every day: that sounded awful. But we also don't have to design offices to offer no privacy and we know how to design better cities that don't offer horrific commutes.
Indeed. "My gold-coated bon-bons are empty, the bottle of 20y scotch is half-full, and Im ONLY in a 5 star ski resort with my colleagues."
Whereas I'm making 150k/yr in the midwest as 100% remote engineer, and livin every day to its fullest. I'm certainly getting no ski trips or otherwise. Most companies don't do that.
I also don't look forward to working at a FAANG either. Way too much churn. And I frankly value stability as well. And the FAANGs aren't that at all.
As much as the admins here want us to think in the most gracious way, I really think these are commissioned hit pieces against remote-work. Ive been tracking them, and its long-form articles like this that advocate in-person work where it doesn't need it.
Yep, Microsoft is in a similar boat. There is a reason for why Red West part of the main campus is often referred to as Red Vest.
Even outside of that, about half of the people I used to work with at MSFT were lifers (7+ years easily, a good number of 10+, a few 15+). Not judgement whatsoever, it sounded like a win-win situation for all sides involved (them and the company). Most of them had kids, families, and the primary reason for staying was great life-work balance and stability. They weren't "delusional" or anything, they knew all the tradeoffs of being a lifer, and they've made an extremely reasonable decision to stay.
Note: what I said doesn't seem to apply to most Azure teams, as I've heard some wild stories from people who switched either to or from Azure (i.e., they experienced how it is to work at both Azure and the rest of MSFT). Azure is intense.
It never happened for lunch for me. It happened while overhearing a discussion a few desks down during working hours.
And please, lunch is hardly a privilege. You can make lunch for $3. It’s a benefit for the company masquerading as a benefit to you. Coffee is so cheap it’s almost free. I buy it at Costco for around $20. I don’t know exactly how many cups I get, but it’s so cheap it’s not even worth calculating.
You're not making the office sound any better with these "just do it yourself bro" arguments. They can do that at home. If they're not even trying to make the office a place people want to be at, then just stop.
"Why do people want to stay WFH when we don't provide incentives for them to come to the office?" "Gee Bob I don't know."
> At Google Chicago, we had a yearly two day team ski trip
So get the remote team together for a two day team ski trip. With all the money you save on office rent, get the while team together for a whole week of skiing.
> Furthermore, the spontaneous and critically important break-outs (small conversations) that happen at team off-sites or conferences are near impossible to replicate over any remote tool I’ve used
True, but again, remote teams can also go to conferences and have off sites.
> Even if they do, once budgets get stressed, it seems likely this will be the first “perk” to go: its benefits are hard to quantify and it certainly seems frivolous to the short-sighted
Maybe so, but team ski trips, conferences and offsite will also be on the chopping block. And the budget is much more likely to get stressed when you have the huge fixed cost of downtown office space in it.
This seems not so much as an argument for office vs remote work but an argument that pandemics are bad. I think a lot of people who didn't work remote before the pandemic have the wrong impression about what working remotely is actually like.
The last thing I want is to spend extra time with my coworkers. Intense work interaction is enough, I strongly prefer to meet "outsiders" in my spare time to actually be able to relax efficiently. Thanks but no thanks.
>The last thing I want is to spend extra time with my coworkers.
That seem to be a common point that divides the WFH vs office people. For some, it's really wild how much they rely on the office, and the people that are only there because they're getting paid to be, to act as a stand in for friends, family, or fulfillment of general social need (plus, in OP's case, the office lets him get his steps in each day(!) which is a topic he surely strikes up a long, tedious conversation about with his coworkers as they're held captive at their desk).
Most coworkers are merely tolerated socially. Even if I think they're wonderful to work with, and cherish and rely on their contributions, I've got zero desire to spend any time with 99% of them outside of situations where I'm paid to be there.
The people who make blanket statements about how integrated, in-office teams are better than remote teams ("every time") fill me with contempt. Mostly because I know over the long haul their arguments will win and we'll all be back in the office because that's what managers who need to be seen want, and coworkers who need a family want, and CEOs who need an empire want.
Don't trust you're lying eyes! Distributed doesn't work! The last two years were a failure. Open source doesn't exist. Now drive into the office so we can have a meeting where everyone sits in a room and midlessly browses Reddit while someone drones on about something that could have been an email.
Yep, I'm ok with the occasional "event", restaurant and such ; but I don't want work to socially pressure me into a small holiday with my colleagues. My time off I want to spend with friends and family, not drinking corporate coolade.
I did one of these kind team junkets in like 2001 when I was just out of college and realized immediately I never wanted to do it ever again. They've been offered a handful of times at other places I've worked and it's a hard pass.
Absolutely agree! I like my coworkers and enjoy going to the office 2 days a week but anything more than that no thanks. I have a life outside of work that I care about.
> This seems not so much as an argument for office vs remote work but an argument that pandemics are bad. I think a lot of people who didn't work remote before the pandemic have the wrong impression about what working remotely is actually like.
That's exactly what some of us said would happen at the beginning of the pandemic. There were a large minority of people complaining about remote work and questioning how anyone could do it. But the pandemic was not a typical remote work/work from home situation. People were forced into it. You couldn't bug out to the library to get a change of view. You couldn't meet up for drinks or coffee to get even a bare minimum of face to face. Some of us who had been remote working for a long time predicted this anti-remote work backlash specifically because of this.
It's prescient, I think many people were feeling like their house was being invaded and molded by work requirements, and it wasn't a choice they were making. I think when someone chooses remote, it's their responsibility to offer a suitable working environment and that's clear.
For many working remotely is about the freedom of choice in the act of working, choose the time, choose the place, choose the equipment. Whereas the pandemic was a situation where that freedom didn't exist, so even previously remote workers were not as happy with remote work.
It was often trying to make an office environment out of a smattering of digital communication tools, and I think that's the wrong approach for remote work. Previously I had all the above flexibility, in the "everyone's remote" model, I was clocking on at 9am, sitting in 10x the bullshit meetings I used to be in as they tried to simulate ad-hoc communication, and all from my bedroom, not a co-working space or cafe or outdoors etc.
There you said it. With the office being a fixed expense, budget is formed around it, since you “just need it”. While the trips and conferences are always discretionary expenses, and as such will not be made if they could be not made.
But I think the whole point is that we don't just need it. The trend towards remote (or at least remote-friendly) work which was dramatically accelerated by the pandemic means that office space should be viewed as a discretionary expense. If you already are locked into a long-term lease and that money is already a sunk cost, then that's one thing. But if you are starting a new company or at a point where you need to renew an office lease, you have to ask yourself whether there really is an ROI on office rent. It's a lot of money after all and you can still get a lot of the benefits of in person team bonding at a fraction of the cost through regular offsites and team building events.
I'll just throw in that "fully remote but with regular company off sites" is actually a really attractive proposition to an employee. Instead of commuting every day to some dreary office I get to work from my very comfortable home and still meet my coworkers at some nice destination a few times a year. I actually feel like I have a better bond with remote coworkers in that situation because when we meet in person it is in a "vacation" atmosphere and being time limited means we really focus on hanging out together and doing group activities.
I meant "fixed" just in the sense that there is a set amount you are contractually obligated to pay regularly, as opposed to discretionary costs of something like team offsite. If everyone is on vacation for the month of July then you can't just decide to not pay office rent for the month, whereas you could decide not to have your July team offsite.
But calling it "fixed" in the sense that you just have to pay it is begging the question. The whole point is that you don't need an office in all situations. Or at least you don't need a dedicated desk for every employee. So you shouldn't look at office rent as a cost of doing business thing. You have to really look at whether the ROI is there. Maybe it is, maybe it's not based on your particular circumstances but it IS a choice.
Because employees have families and lives outside of work so can't just drop everything to go a team ski trip. Once or twice a year, sure, but more than that it's a chore more than a perk :)
My company is remote only and the money saved on office space has been reallocated to additional team outings and a longer runway. Constant outings sounds a bit overwhelming, personally.
My last remote company had quarterly offsites, and sponsored at least a conference of your choice per year if you wanted to go to it. My current remote company hasn’t had many offsites (covid + clients in healthcare) but hires aggressively and pays significantly above market. Also spares almost no expense on employees. It’s hard to compare like for like though. How much of any company’s actions can be attributed to budget savings from cutting physical offices, as opposed to any number of other variables: decisions from leadership, market strategy, or quality of last funding round? It’s hard to isolate just the one cause, but it might be worth gathering that aggregate data to see if patterns exist.
Anecdotally it seems much more difficult to get an offsite together in the modern remote office than it was in the old offices. With the new remote world, senior leadership struggles to stay in touch with the general feeling of workers. While this surely results in fewer time wasting pep talks, it also means that the worthwhile activities are also getting side lined.
What about it is more difficult? The (admittedly few) off-sites I've been to have been scheduled 6+ months in advance and the general expectation is that everyone is going unless there's a wedding or a kid is sick or something, in the sense that it's not really culturally acceptable to take PTO during that time unless it's for something very important. When the VP or CTO comes around in February and says "we're going to $CITY for a week, all expenses paid, in September" it's pretty easy for all the teams to get around that.
> With the new remote world, senior leadership struggles to stay in touch with the general feeling of workers.
I’d say that is more of a sign of poor management chain management, communication, and people management. Senior mgmt can stay in touch by, surprise, staying in touch. Remote makes it harder for those poor at written skills and tech skills, but a good manager should’ve been writing things down to begin with.
Opinions from someone doing mgmt for quite some time now.
And that's a MAJOR contingent of people against remotework.
Most middle and upper management can't do it. They fail. They're impediments. They're also the ones who want glass "fishbowls" to show off their employees' toil, AND to "supervise" professionals for the lack of appearance of work.
In reality, companies would do themselves a LOT of cost-cutting to getting rid of ineffectual managers who get in the way of process and progress. But then again, its that class of workers is why we're dealing with anti-remotework all the time.
You can’t get rid of the C-suites’ safety layer. Middle management exists to take the fall when the C-suite makes major mistakes. The sociopaths at the top won’t even consider it.
I'm a super introvert who works remote. I don't want the company to spend a bunch of money on a ski trip for the company, I want to see my portion of that money in my pocket so I can do what I enjoy.
Working from home means my employer gets more productivity, since I can handle "life" things easier without having to run home. They save money on office space, in-office meals, chairs, desks, and such, and I get more autonomy on my personal setup and how I want to work. It also means that people can move due to life reasons such as to be closer to an elderly family member, and still stay working for the same employer.
I could get steps from walking around town, or, I can walk my dog while I'm waiting on a build or at lunchtime. My kid is home a couple days this week because of break for the upcoming holiday, so she gets to go with me and the dog on our morning walk, and I don't need to worry about child care.
I like the people I work with, and have built rapport with them over years of working together on difficult problems. We connect based on our professional mutual work, but we each have our own interests and families.
Remote work emphasizes this professional connection and broadens your ability to work with more varying people due to the limited and directed nature of the communications and interactions. You don't need to worry about the person in the next cubicle loudly talking on the phone or eating potato chips or burning popcorn in the microwave. It makes it easier to focus on positive interactions and tune out the bad ones. If I don't want to hear all the sports talk, I'm not in the #sports slack channel.
Yes, I could operate in an office environment, a lot will probably return to it. However, I've been fully remote for years, and it'd be a hard sell for me to go back.
I'm the author of the post and just want to say: I think it's awesome that you work at a remote company and am glad that you found a role that fits your personality. It sounds like you're happier there and I'm glad that the option exists.
I think that the fact that there's more variety now in whether you can work remotely or in an office is awesome, and I hope that's not going away. (And don't think it will.) And no job should ever give you hell for staying home one or two days per week if your job is totally doable at home.
With that being said, there are a lot of people in the world that genuinely enjoy having in-person interactions with their colleagues every day and I'm one of them. I've been lucky enough to work in jobs with awesome colleagues and I don't want to be put up digital barriers between me and them. I also like the fact that I have some forcing function for getting more than 2,000 steps a day.
The main thing that I'm worried about is that companies are going to see dollar signs in remote work because they can cut office space expenses, only for employees to not be able to backtrack.
I enjoy the in-person interactions in the office, and I'll even argue that there's benefits and desirability to it, and office work and centralisation.
But my wife has worked at a company that did offsite kinda vacation/camp things, and gotta say, it ranks up pretty high there on the corporate dystopia cringe scale for us.
I work at a semi distributed organisation atm (several offices in different cities) and we generally used to have once a year offsite. while it was nice to see some faces in person, the experience of leaving my family to do so, and to have to go to locations and accommodation chosen by work, was again just a downer. I know other people looked forward to it, so horses for courses, but I also know there were people working long hours and liking the travel because they had nothing else going on in their lives.
I think the strengths of centralisation stand independent a lot of these practices, that make a lot of us shudder on some level.
My argument against that narrative is if you crave interpersonal connection, there are healthier ways to engage in that through actual friendships and hobbies, than within the forced artificial construct of corporate hierarchy, rules, incentives and power structures. I can't imagine as an independent contributor this would be productive or desired.
In my experience, I've found managers very enthusiastic to RTO as it gives them more validation, and increased productivity through monitoring - under the guise of building team rapport.
> I don't want the company to spend a bunch of money on a ski trip for the company, I want to see my portion of that money in my pocket so I can do what I enjoy.
Your portion would be taxed, they can offer this avoiding 40% taxes on it or whatever it would work out to at your marginal rate. You may still not want it, but the alternative isn't getting the same money.
I'd rather have this as taxed bonus income than as a ski trip. Bei g crowded in with all my coworkers (whom I actually like by the way) still doesn't sound like a perk to me. And I like skiing. Or at least snowboarding.
I still wouldn't see it as a perk to spend a few days together with the people with whom I work. I like working with them. I really do. But I also really like to do what I want when I am not on the clock.
And that would be so worth the tax cut. At least in my personal opinion.
The point here is that the ski trip is not a perk, but an investment in company productivity via social lubrication. The company believes it is getting more for its money by sending the team on a ski trip, than it would depositing those same dollars into people’s bank accounts (even ignoring taxes).
I have been remote for six years and I love it, but still some of the biggest leaps forward in trust and communication I get with people happen when I spend time with them in person; and some of the most fruitful products and tech I’ve been involved in conceiving weren’t in a meeting set up to conceive them, but accidentally, while having a drink and being in the same room as someone I didn’t plan to be with.
Everyone is different and I’m not saying you should be forced to do any of this. I recognize that often these situations are just painful, depending on who you are and who your team is. Just saying the dollars have a specific purpose when being spent in this way.
For introverts, such trips are not lubrication. They effectively throw sand directly in the gears of the machine. Personally, it takes me days to unwind after being forced to go on such outings.
The smart thing to do would be for companies to actually solicit feedback and listen to their employees in order to accommodate their needs. As it stands, one must actively work to prevent companies from sabotaging themselves through mandatory participation in activities that will ultimately be injurious to your mental health.
I hope remote with asynchronous interactions is the future, because big cities are increasingly unlivable, and corporate culture is often a culture of distraction. Remote is hard to do right, but it's worth striving for.
Remote also greatly enhances the talent pool available for employers. It reduces cost too. It helps the environment. It's the antidote to urbanization. It potentially brings money to underdeveloped areas, which helps democracy.
Unclear that's a particularly worthy goal. I enjoy the rural life as much as anyone, but it's hard to argue that a "liveable city" (dense, planned, walkable/bikeable, work near to where you live, etc) isn't a more efficient use of society's resources than the automobile-centric suburban sprawl that much of the US is subjected to.
As a sibling already mentioned, one does not preclude the other. I don't know why the US does it the way it does it and other countries seem to strive for it too nowadays, even the ones that have done it properly so far.
Especially in the US I don't see an issue with both building out and being walkable or livable without cars. One just has to plan it properly. There are tons of medium sized cities around the world that get some of it right already, possibly by accident. I don't think we need to go Tokyo style or New York style density with millions upon millions of people being crammed into skypscrapers and every inch of soil covered in asphalt or concrete. Sure there's Central Park but not much more and it's so full of people it's unbelievable. So many people all crammed into one space generates so many issues that otherwise don't exist.
I think lots of medium sized cities, say 150-500k, can easily provide enough public transport to make it liveable, provide enough green space to make it liveable and provide city centers with lots of concrete and asphalt for those that want that to make it completely walkable. Before you say that its impossible, I have lived in such cities and they work just fine. In my younger years I lived in such a downtown and everything was within walking distance. Work, groceries, pubs even stores. And it was absolutely safe to walk all over downtown, half drunk in the middle of the night to get from one pub to the next or home. Sure, to go to IKEA I had to take a car and drive to the outskirts of the next city of similar size. But how often do I go to IKEA? Once, when I moved in. The a bit older me had to then make a choice of moving to a particular side of town to be close enough to the office and such. With remote work it wouldn't matter. I could've stayed where I was. Get to the city center? 15 minute train ride after walking 5 minutes to the train.
The middle and lower class is quickly outpriced of that liveable city or state experience. It would be better to spread our resources to more areas, instead of concentrating it to a few. We already know what wealth concentration, inequality looks like.
When you give all opportunities to a few, they don't tend to use it to everyone's benefit. People who are robbed of the consequences of their actions tend to lose sight of reality.
> The middle and lower class is quickly outpriced of that liveable city or state experience. It would be better to spread our resources to more areas, instead of concentrating it to a few. We already know what wealth concentration, inequality looks like.
That's not because livable places with amenities located within walking distance are expensive to build or maintain. It's because there aren't enough of them, primarily because in very large tracts of every metropolitan area they are illegal to build under current zoning ordinances. That's how you get cute prewar streetcar suburbs that are ludicrously unaffordable - the neighborhoods were cheap to build at the time and could be cheap to build today, the prices are all because people love living there and we made it illegal to build more.
Postwar suburban sprawl is monstrously expensive to build and maintain. You need to build and maintain an incredible amount more infrastructure per person, and because the properties themselves are less livable and car-dependent, fewer people want to and can afford to live there, which makes them "cheaper."
The answer is not to force people to live in car dependent sprawl. It's to build more walkable places so that the cost comes down.
Almost everyone in my circles are loving big city life while working remotely. It depends on your life circumstances, and what you enjoy, but let’s not generalize that urban lifestyle is bad. Meeting new people, enjoying indoor activities, walking around and etc. are not dying anytime soon, and rent prices show how people are still willing to join in.
I think it kinda depends on your age. When I was in my twenties and thirties, and despite being a country lad, living in cities was highly desirable and I had a lot of good times and made some great long lasting friendships during that period.
In my forties I became less enamoured by city life and in my fifties, now living in a rural location and working remotely, if I never see the inside of a city again then that's fine by me.
It’s interesting that in general everyone on HN loves big city living, but then you have a post about city noise and it’s a thousand posts complaining about urban noise and how you can’t get away from it.
Of course, the key is that you can have both with the right transportation options.
While I enjoy Not Just Bikes as a channel, it goes a little deep into the "cars are literally the root of every problem there has ever been even accounting for the period before cars existed."
I live in the city. It's loud af, but general traffic is only a small part of it. Essential services like police, ambulance, and fire sirens, and trash collection are massively loud. Then you've got bars blasting music on Fridays. People shouting, laughing, and, in general, existing (often till the wee hours of the morning). They there's the meth-fueled tweakers shouting obscenities. Construction noises. Road work. etc..
I think you're making a mistaken observation there. It's a skewed data set: of course people who like living in cities will talk about policies they'd like to see to make their cities better, and not complain about ways that a suburb or rural community could be better.
I don't live in a suburb so it would be very odd for me to complain about a hypothetical suburb I don't live in, even though I'd have more complaints if I did live in a suburb. Just how HN as a whole talks about making tech jobs better (e.g. this remote work thread, which isn't relevant to most jobs) far more than it does about other jobs: it's just more relevant to the people here, and even if they overall like their tech job, they want it to be better.
Not just age. Depends on the city where you live, how you grew up and your priorities. I would say it’s harder for people that grew up in suburban communities to live their 40s/50s in a city. Meanwhile, I know people in their mid-life (40-60) that actually moved back from suburban lifestyle to NYC downtown life. From my personal perspective, even being retired in a city would be better than living in a small community where everything you do on a daily basis is exactly the same. But again, I understand others’ perspectives and everyone has different things they enjoy in life.
Idk I live in a city that honestly is great to live in (Tokyo), run a distributed team comprised of others who all live in big cities around the world, and nobody has expressed that they feel like cities suck to live in. Different strokes I guess. Or maybe it’s not that cities suck, but that the cities you’ve been to (cough USA cough) suck.
If you have the budget it's great to live in a nice big city, you don't even need a car. Just Uber everywhere, get some groceries delivered, put your kids in fancy but expensive kindergarten, and buy a nice large house right near that park the kids love. Bonus points if the city is walkable or has decent public transportation.
If you are starting as an average,non FAANG engineer in an expensive city it probably sucks a bit more.
> If you have the budget it's great to live in a nice big city, you don't even need a car. Just Uber everywhere, get some groceries delivered, put your kids in fancy but expensive kindergarten, and buy a nice large house right near that park the kids love. Bonus points if the city is walkable or has decent public transportation.
It's kind of distressing to hear someone express "Just Uber everywhere" as the ideal template for a car-free lifestyle, with walkability and public transportation relegated to "bonus points." I live car-free in the metro area outside of D.C. and primarily get around by bus and bicycle. I suspect that it requires a much lower budget than Ubering everywhere and you can live a lot more healthily by doing so too.
edit: I'd also like to point out that when you impose such a high price tag on all of your spatial displacements, you discourage yourself from doing it more. With walking, cycling and public transit, you open yourself up to a lot more serendipitous and impulsive trips. Today I cycled a few minutes to the park and did some work on a picnic table because I just felt like I wanted a change of scenery. Then I came back an hour later. Doing that with Uber would have felt absurd.
I'd argue that it's not really a big city if there's a constant need to Lyft to your destinations.
Extensive subway system has always been one of the main differences of how enjoyable city life actually is in the various cities I've lived in. Thinking about a car as just a time saving activity versus a necessity (even if it's a ride share) is extremely freeing.
> I'd argue that it's not really a big city if there's a constant need to Lyft to your destinations.
If that is your metric, then there isn't a single big city in the US aside from NYC (and, maaaaybe, Chicago).
With all other big cities in the US, you can technically get away by using public transport exclusively, but with a really giant caveat - your place of living, your place of work, and all the other places you would want to visit are all, by sheer luck, located near public transport routes. There is a non-zero number of people in this situation, but it requires a great deal of luck and specific choices to be made for that to happen.
To be more specific, I will use Seattle as an example. We have a solid lightrail and bus system, and the expansion of lightrail has been going great. Public transport covers a lot of places and areas one might need or want to go to. But it doesn't cover an even larger amount of places/areas. I personally know plenty of people here who live without cars, and even the most pro-public-transport of them resort to Uber/Lyft fairly often. Not as a time-saving activity, but out of necessity.
I think your costs baseline is underestimating: even starting as a FAANG engineer in NYC or SF or you already can't buy a "large house next to the park"
Maybe I'm misreading something here, but why should someone who is an entry level software developer at a FAANG be able to afford one of the best houses in the city?
There's no inherent reason why this should be so. Big cities can and do provide a marvelous life experience.
But almost all big cities in the US suffer from total mismanagement. IMHO, the greatest immediate goal for the US should be to work out how to correct that.
This is the case outside the US as well. Short term, greed-focused strategies cause this mismanagement somewhere down the line. Over the top prices, noise pollution, etc. None of these need to exist at the rates they do today. Similar issues form outside cities when mismanagement occurs, it's just harder to notice with fewer people involved.
>Remote also greatly enhances the talent pool available for employers. It reduces cost too.
Neither of these things are good for an employee.
A world where none of your coworkers have any shared background with you or where you can lose an interview at a local company to someone 700 miles away sounds like hell.
> lose an interview at a local company to someone 700 miles away sounds like hell
I'd feel pretty terrible about my ability if one of the best things about me was proximity to a building. I live in the midwest and I like it in the midwest, and I'm quite happy with a ~future~ present where I'm competing with people around the world for a job I want and not stuck to the one of the 10 or so places I could do my kind of work here.
You might be in the top 1%, but 99% of people aren't. Not everyone is able to compete globally against 3 billion other people. Most people are unexceptional and average. And that's okay. Those are the workers keep the world moving forward.
It is perfectly okay to just be the best person at something in your town or local area. Telling people "you should feel pretty terrible about your ability if you aren't one of the best people in the world" is telling 99.99% of the population they should feel forever worthless.
> Telling people "you should feel pretty terrible about your ability if you aren't one of the best people in the world" is telling 99.99% of the population they should feel forever worthless.
but he did not say this at all. not even literally.
you merely think he implied it, which is still a leap, since all this person described to you was how they personally internalize their work.
your disdain for competition makes it harder to read.
I appreciate this reply and most definitely do not think I’m in the 1% if anything, let alone the talent pool. I come from a town that wasn’t a tech center growing up (and still isn’t, though we have some logos now), and am largely self-taught. I just like playing with computers and am lucky to have made a job doing that, and am glad to live in a time where I can do something I love, somewhere I love, but for companies not necessarily here. My only point was that if my best qualification was proximity, I’d feel pretty unaccomplished, but the flip side of that is that I welcome the challenge to apply for jobs that are far more challenging than I’d otherwise have access to.
You're not competing against the best of the best for every single job. Only 1% of people are in the 1%, and they'll largely be employed in high-wage, high-visibility positions at high-budget employers. In an idealized global market you'd be competing against other people for jobs with desirability commensurate with your own ability.
It's true that if in an absolute sense you're in the bottom rung of the labor pool then a global market will be more likely to sort you into a job with low desirability. I sympathize; I'm from Cincinnati, and if my employer were in the Bay Area (and paying Bay Area wages) it would have been harder for me to get a job there. But I'm not that sympathetic, because a global market means someone with a better fit but no local options can find a job. It means that if the market for data scientists in Cincinnati dries up I still have a chance.
Celebrating mediocrity while being privileged enough to make lots of $$$ is the definition of toxic mindset.
IMO, if a person somewhere in the world is better qualified for the job than me - it's ok.
They worked hard to get where they are and their work should be compensated fairly.
My company has employees all around Europe, and in north America too. Funny enough, even without the shared background, we kinda draw from the same principles and have a common understanding on how to behave an operate.
A world where I have to work with what the local market offers sounds like russian roulette. I don't want to be constrained by where my parents decided to live.
> A world where none of your coworkers have any shared background with you
So you're against diversity? Differing backgrounds and points of view can only be a good thing. For coworkers, for the product, for the company. I know it's en vogue now, but it really is important.
> where you can lose an interview at a local company to someone 700 miles away
Hiring is not zero-sum. With the current and likely future dev market, there's enough jobs for everyone. Companies should consider applicants regardless of location of residence, and offer the same compensation as well.
I think diversity has been pushed on the workplace because it massively opens up the labor supply and allows companies to plummet wages. As a native worker of a country it is completely against your self-interest to advocate for such changes.
All of the pro-diversity platitudes like "diversity is a strength" are never justified with data, they're just said as truisms you're supposed to blindly believe and repeat.
Why does nobody ever talk about how homogeneity is a strength? The comradery you used to have in mining villages where all workers had a tightly shared heritage and all grew up together was probably the strongest workforce you could hope for. But workers with those kinds of strong bonds do scary things like forming unions and going on strike, we don't want any of that! And that's why Amazon tracks lack of workplace diversity as a metric for risk of union formation :)
> Why does nobody ever talk about how homogeneity is a strength? The comradery you used to have in mining villages
As I'm sure you're aware, software development is very different from physical labor. For one, it's a creative endeavor, where different points of view stemming from different backgrounds can only have a positive effect on the end product.
Think of it in terms of code reviews. Does the product benefit more from being reviewed by teammates from the same schools and employment backgrounds, or by ones with different life and professional experiences? I can't point to any studies to prove this, but from personal experience I'd argue it's the latter.
Besides, getting to know people from different backgrounds and cultures can only expand your own view points and make you a better developer and person.
Your point about companies pushing diversity to prevent unions sounds conspiratorial at best. Strong bonds can and do form regardless of culture.
>For one, it's a creative endeavor, where different points of view stemming from different backgrounds can only have a positive effect on the end product.
I'd say it's far more engineering than creative. You're writing code to meet the specifications of a client. I don't think the race of the person writing that code makes a difference.
>Does the product benefit more from being reviewed by teammates from the same schools and employment backgrounds, or by ones with different life and professional experiences
It benefits from being reviewed by people who have lots of experience writing different types of software. Which has nothing to do with ethnic diversity.
>Besides, getting to know people from different backgrounds and cultures can only expand your own view points and make you a better developer
Meaningless platitude, unless you can back this up with data
>Your point about companies pushing diversity to prevent unions sounds conspiratorial at best.
I stand corrected. Corporations gonna corporate /shrug
However I disagree with the conclusion:
> It appears it's nothing more than a union busting tactic to divide and conquer their own workforce so they'll be easier to control and accept lower wages.
Quite the sensationalist take. Again, I don't have data to back this up, but IME a diverse team produces better results and I'd rather work in one than not.
> Does the product benefit more from being reviewed by teammates from the same schools and employment backgrounds, or by ones with different life and professional experiences?
In practice "diversity" is more often people from the same schools and employment backgrounds, with just a bit more variation in sex or race or ethnicity.
> The comradery you used to have in mining villages where all workers had a tightly shared heritage and all grew up together was probably the strongest workforce you could hope for.
It was certainly good for the owners of the mines and other extractive businesses to have their workers feel some sense of loyalty to each other based on where they were born. Not so much for the workers themselves that had fewer opportunities for growth, nor their families as the mines closed and the towns died.
> But workers with those kinds of strong bonds do scary things like forming unions and going on strike, we don't want any of that!
There are plenty of unions made up of people from all sorts of backgrounds. Some of them span states (or are at least affiliated with organizations that span states). I don't know where you got this idea that there's a connection between birthplace and unionization.
Diversity initiatives in tech have a strong bottoms-up component from a subset of employees. "Self interest" isn't really the point.
One motivator is societal good and fairness to ensure that great opportunities are as equally available as possible, and that nobody avoids or leaves the industry due to their race or gender.
The other is making sure you have more demographic variation that can make a better product for more people. A classic example is avoiding gaffs in ML models based on skin color. All else equal, the more representative your employees are of your target user base, the more likely someone is to raise the right questions early. This is especially true for consumer tech where engineers are part of the process of deciding what gets built, but also true in cases like thinking about ML fairness.
>Differing backgrounds and points of view can only be a good thing.
I assure you, diversity that would actually impact production in some big way is not the diversity being hired for. Just look at how many psychological tests emphasize a variety of personalities, meanwhile hiring tries to find the same car with a different paint job.
This really isn't the same "diversity" as "integrating marginalized communities", though.
So yes, I am against the particular kind of diversity that prefers hiring a wealthy brahman living in India over the inner-city kid who needs a leg up.
I'm also opposed to the kind of "diversity" that puts a substantial portion of our domestic workforce out of a job.
Neither of these is what "diversity" used to mean; the term is being coopted by those who would benefit from lowering working wages.
It's double edges all the way around. "shared background" has certainly been the cause of a lot of harm. It's one of those things that people want, but which is bad, like "Everything be more efficient if everyone would stop wasting time on their own different ideas and just did what I want.". There are no single simple correct answers.
Shared background can be a good thing and can apply to good things, but it is also the basis of all discrimination, tribalism, prejudice, or even at it's most benign, inconsideration or ignorance.
The examples are the rule and it's instead hard to think of any exceptions.
I greatly disagree with the idea that big cities are becoming "increasingly unlivable."
American cities, especially downtowns, are in the middle of doing the exact opposite of becoming unlivable. I'm not talking opinions here, I'm talking about factual changes in the context of American history.
American city downtowns started as, essentially, the entire city, with a diverse mix of residents, commerce, and industry. As the industrialization progressed, those downtowns morphed into commercial-only zones as most other uses migrated outward. [1]
Residential living was very rare in city centers in America, with only slum living left. Since then, however, American cities are re-introducing residential life to city centers and redesigning them around mixed use and essentially revitalizing them. [1]
So this idea that big cities are "increasingly unlivable" is more of a cynical opinion rather than a matter of historical fact.
Also, in terms of sustainability, cities still win out. Suburban and rural development fragments animal habitats and uses more land per person. More time and miles are needed in your car burning oil to get around. City dwellers who walk and take transit are more carbon efficient than suburban and rural drivers.
Counter-intuitively, water quality is better in cities where more people are connected to a treated municipal water source. Sewage is also better managed in cities. [2]
Now, on to what's my actual opinion...regarding asynchronous work: it's awesome if you're already at a senior level of skill, but to me it seems absolutely horrendous for new graduates and junior level employees. It's difficult to do "apprenticeship" asynchronously. The idea of a future of asynchronous work is also incredibly software-biased. For example, when Apple wants their employees back in the office there's good reason: they design hardware.
Obviously not all jobs are remote-compatible, and obviously you would not do apprenticeship entirely asynchronously.
Liveable is a subjective term, but water or air quality, or environmental footprint varies a great deal between countries. Cities consume most of the energy and produce most of the greenhouse gases for obvious reasons. Historically big cities became increasingly liveable, however my opinion is that we are at a turning point, in average big cities will become unliveable, some will improve slightly, and many will falter greatly. However urbanization will go on, people will continue to fill cities looking for opportunities, ironically climate change will even hasten this, eventually turning big cities into death traps.
You forgot to mention the huge environmental impact that remote first has. Even EVs still pollute the air from tires along with micro plastic fragments.
Nothing shows that corporate support for the environment is mostly lip service when it comes to lack of support for remote work despite the major environmental benefits that it brings.
I'm happy as a bug with being fully remote. I'm glad there are more companies considering fully distributed teams and I hope the trend continues.
If there's some future where we can mix things up and work in person some times that would be fine. I used to have an office in a co-working space I used just to get out of the house. It was nice seeing the regular, every-day familiar strangers along the way, get a coffee from the usual place, etc.
... but my team was still located all around the world and the office was within walking distance of my house.
I don't particularly enjoy commuting, the dour glow of fluorescent lights, the desks lined up in rows, or working in a concrete coffin.
I like being able to go for a walk in my neighbourhood in the afternoon or spend a bit of time in my garden. I enjoy being surrounded by my books. I like it when my cat snuggles in my lap. I like having no commute.
Some people like after-work happy hours and "team building." Not me. I like to get my job done and go home to my family, friends, and neighbours.
I also think productivity-wise it brings a lot of benefits. The best collaboration happens with people write things down and share them widely. That is often hindered in an office setting where hallway chats and random encounters ensure that the people engaged in those activities control what gets shared and with whom; great for politics but useless for work.
I get the creativity side of it: ideas aren't born in a vacuum. For media work like music it's way harder to work remotely. But I don't think ideas are born solely in offices either. Great ideas come from people collaborating and sharing. This happens more in a distributed team because fewer people are left out of the process. It's way easier in a software engineering team. There's literally no evidence that offices contribute to anything other than needless CO2 emissions and traffic.
I do prefer the hum of case fans and the sound of my Model M.
Having a choice over ones environment is a huge win for someone like me though that has sensory sensitivities most folks don't seem to have problems with.
Everyone's different and unless you account for that we will keep talking past each other.
Yesterday I went to the office for the first time in a month. I hated it.
First I spent over 1 hour commuting each way, which felt like a massive waste of time. We moved to a town out of the city because here we could afford a better living space for us without having to spend half of our income in rent.
Since I left in a hurry I forgot to take my lunch with me (that I cook at home daily), so instead I had to go to a takeaway around the corner and spend 25$ for a dubious sandwich and a snack. Coffee from the big tub in the lobby is so bad that makes me wonder how someone can botch coffee so badly. After lunch I got sleepy as sometimes happens, but instead of a powernap like I have at home, I had to bumble through my code until I sobered up. I ended up getting back home late and exhausted.
Some of the arguments from OP are quite curious, such as the number of steps. In my case, rather than spending 2 hours sitting in busses, I could spend 1 hour in the gym and 1 hour walking my dog, and come up ahead.
By the way, why is bonding with colleagues such a big deal? I had to leave my family and lifelong friends behind due to moving to another city. What if WFH had been the norm when I started my career? Doesn't hanging out with your family and friends count for anything?
Again I recognise each person's circumstances are different, but after having a taste of remote work (after 12 years of in-the-office career) I don't think I'll ever be able to go back.
> By the way, why is bonding with colleagues such a big deal?
One of the most consistent themes in the “please go back to offices” articles is that there is a cohort of people who appear to have designed their lives around their job. Their social life solely revolves around work. They don’t appear to actually have social lives that don’t involve coworkers. They also appear to believe all that matters is optimizing work performance.
Not exactly what I’d think would lead to a generally good level of well being, but I guess it works for some people.
> By the way, why is bonding with colleagues such a big deal? I had to leave my family and lifelong friends behind due to moving to another city. What if WFH had been the norm when I started my career? Doesn't hanging out with your family and friends count for anything?
I think this is for the company? If you have a good rapport with your co-workers, I suspect it will be easier to work together on problems.
It is of course also possible to do things more formally.
I dunno. I like to keep coworkers at an arms length and not get too buddy-buddy, and I prefer to socialize with my non-work friends. So I'm not suggesting that people should replace their social friends with work friends or something ridiculous like that. But the there's plenty of room between best buds and total icy formality that for coworkers to exist in, which might make it easier to bounce ideas back and forth.
You have to realise that the majority of people who want to force everybody to work in an office have no life outside of work. No friends, no intimate partner, nothing at all. WFH is a nightmare for them.
Well i hope it is. I can't stand commuting or the noisy and distracting office environment. Being close to my family is way more important than being close to coworkers. I'm also way more productive at home, I can wear what i want, I can speak out loud to myself, listen to metal, take a walk, use my clean bathroom and the list goes on. Overall it's healthier and more ecologic. It's just doesn't compare and any argument I've heard/read against 100% remote work just doesn't matter to me. I also don't care about small talk with coworkers or any kind of non-professional bonding, I have friends for that.
Agree with you. I'm highly skeptical of an argument from a (X?)googler about why remote is bad.
Like sure it might be nice to go to Google's office instead of work from the kitchen table but that's not what's on the table for 99.999% of developers. It's some open-plan dead air noisy hell.
From what I’ve heard Google campus is very like a college campus - and if they provided dorms many of the younger employees would love it. And it would have been amazing in my college years.
Having worked at Google previously, I completely agree with this assessment.
I love remote work, mostly because actual work environment feels hostile towards ICs but if I had a Google like environment again, I’d have no problems going back to office.
Other than listening to metal (I'm more into a mix of punk and classical), I could've written this comment. When I commuted into work it took maybe 40 minutes from front door to desk in the morning; the reverse trip often took an hour and a half. It was absolutely killer. I'd rather be getting painful dental work done than sit in traffic for an hour with nothing but a podcast to distract me.
Now that my company has returned to work with a "hybrid" plan (2 days in the office, 3 days out), I'm glad that they've been flexible in allowing me to be fully remote despite being local. My dogs would be the saddest pups stuck in crates without me.
This is exactly what I do right now and it's pretty nice. We have quarterly planning weeks and everyone goes on-site for that, but otherwise, we're split around the country and there is only one office in downtown San Antonio. 70% of the people working on this program don't live in San Antonio, so there is no practical way to undo being a distributed workforce. But it's a military program and the military is pretty used to working in a distributed manner. They need to be able to work in theaters of combat where you're not only spread out and constantly on the move, but any node in your worker network can go offline at any time, possibly permanently.
I haven't gone to an offsite meeting with my coworkers yet (we're 100% remote) so I don't really know what to expect of them. I do know that when I worked in offices there was a lot of bullshit going on every day that only happened because the barrier to interruption was lower. What goes on at these offsite meetings that makes them worthwhile?
I usually just expect to drink booze and shoot the shit with my team. There are usually team building activities arranged by HR, that is another way get to know your teammates. In my opinion, getting a little inebriated is the fastest way to bond with your team.
I will say this about the world, though. (As someone who hasn't gone to an office job in 20 years).
* No one builds rapport through zoom meetings.
* People have forgotten how to handle chance encounters, and display a lot of signs of social discomfort now when they do have them.
* People also stopped taking care of themselves during the pandemic, at the same time everyone started working from home.
The world is realizing what offroad warrior freelancers like me realized a long time ago, but it takes time to realize it: It's actually hard to organize your time and take care of yourself in the absence of formal structure. I think it will take 20 years or so before a majority of people in white collar positions really adjust to creating their own work/life balance now that it's open to them to choose how to manage their geographic place and time. It's actually a lot of responsibility, and something a lot of people never asked for.
I joined my present company in 2020 and had no problems building a rapport with my fellow workers via Teams.
> People have forgotten how to handle chance encounters, and display a lot of signs of social discomfort now when they do have them.
I don't see any evidence of this. I have plenty of chance encounters and don't feel any less comfortable about them compared to pre-lockdown, and neither it seems do the folks that are on the other end of those chance encounters.
> People also stopped taking care of themselves during the pandemic, at the same time everyone started working from home.
People also stopped sitting in cars and trains for hours on end commuting to the office and used that time to get some exercise. Sure it's anecdotal, but you couldn't buy a bicycle around here because demand went through the roof.
> It's actually hard to organize your time and take care of yourself in the absence of formal structure.
I've worked remotely almost continuously since 2003 and have managed to maintain enough self-discipline to stay organised and look after myself (certainly at least as well as if I'd had to go to an office for "formal structure").
> something a lot of people never asked for.
I disagree, they were told they couldn't because employers have a natural distrust of their staff and "this is the way its always been". Working from home is weirdly seen as some kind of perk, it's not, it's still work.
Now don't get me wrong, there'll be a bunch of folks who either can't work from home and being in the office is their thing (or an escape :) ), but there are also plenty of folks who can function perfectly well working from home so why not facilitate that?
I flat out disagree with every single point you make. Not to dismiss your own experience, disregard what you are saying, or be snide or whatever, but:
1. I met my new manager (switched jobs) for the first time over MS Teams in a personally challenging time; I needed to take care of my family the second week after starting a new job. I worried a lot over this, which was met with incredible kindness and empathy.
2. I've started several serendipitous, fruitful collaborations by expansion of offhanded questions or remarks in remote meetings.
3. My mental and physical health is better than pre pandemic because of less commute, more leniency to take a walk or bike a bit, lower stress around picking up kids, being able to cook my own food instead of relying on (potentially unhealthy) cafeteria
The company I work for will happily let you do this even after already having had your lunch break. As far as they're concerned as long as the work gets done they don't care that much as to how it gets done.
People don't realize that walking is a way to think and thinking is work as well.
Many successful people, including Steve Jobs, took long walks during the day. It helps the mind focus and untangle all your ideas in your head.
I disagree. I think rapport is created when you create things/solutions that makes sense for the business. You don't create rapport by being in same room when things don't make sense.
In high school I made rapport with teachers that were good. I did not make rapport with bad teachers who pretended to be good at their job.
Same as developer: rapport is made with other people who strives for clarity in design and communication. No rapport is made with people who play people games.
Office time versus zoom time does not make any difference.
Yes! I've been remote for many years, more than anyone else I know. I learned how to work long before videoconference was even an option, and I never turn my camera on. Some people have never seen my face live. But they know who I am. Because when I come in the room, good questions start getting asked, brains turn on, decisions are made, roles and accountability are set up.
If you're there to do the work, the other people who are there to do the work appreciate the hell out of you. (And most of them don't turn their camera on either.)
> It's actually hard to organize your time and take care of yourself in the absence of formal structure.
It’s not hard, it just takes deliberate action. Learning to take said matters into your own hands rather than conforming them to what you “have to do” (aka formal structure) is something most people would benefit from as early as possible in life.
no one builds rapport in zoom meetings where the company strangles the meeting space with an expectation of conduct and subject matter*
whole internet communities born around games which rely on communication are quite literally filled with (positive) remote rapport.
quite a few demographics have had long time remote-friends (i personally have had a few, one i practically grew up with from ages 9 to 23, and have stayed in contact with) -- never met them irl bc logistics are hard.
i just do not understand this notion of not being able to build relationships remotely -- it is a fiction.
In my experience you can build rapport through video calls. For certain not in meetings with groups, but on 1:1s it's doable. You have to be conscious about it and put more effort. But it's not impossible. In fact, for me it's easier because it's not by chance, I can put myself in the right mindset to have meaningful conversations rather than bumping into random people when solving a problem in my mind.
I do agree it's a lot of responsibility, but life changes that way. Horse breeders didn't ask for the Model T and so on...
Funny that you would take this example since personal cars (as we know them since the Model T) are likely to become restricted to rich people in a few decades...
(Though I doubt horses would come back to replace a significant fraction of them.)
> It's actually hard to organize your time and take care of yourself in the absence of formal structure.
I have strong doubts that you’ve been remote for “20 years”. This is much easier to accomplish working remotely. Outside of tech and Silicon Valley, there are still managers who are keen to see their their employees warming their seats despite the proven effectiveness of the independence of remote work
RE: traveling to socialize with distributed coworkers:
As a person with three children and a working spouse who's busier than I am, and as a person managing a distributed team, the notion of convening my colleagues in one area for a team-building event is stressful. I recently have been given budget to do so and have been volun-told to organize such an event. Many of my direct reports are eager to meet up in-person. I value their happiness so I will to oblige them. And I'm not going to lie, it sounds like fun - I really do like the people I work with. However, being away from my family for days is a hardship for my children and my spouse, who already has enough stress and is unaccustomed to being the day-to-day caregiver. Since those are the people I value most highly, it's hard for me to justify the time, expense, and effort involved with traveling for the sole purpose of socializing with my coworkers.
There's another aspect to meatspace, which is asymmetric loyalty.
Most corporations are single-minded AI's with strictly zero loyalty to any worker without title =~ /^C..$/. The instant some spreadsheet cell turns yellow upstairs, you're out.
Due to the human firmware drive of expected reciprocity, people often forget this and make enormous sacrifices for $work, uprooting their families, working long hours, missing family events, etc. When making this sacrifice of loyalty, they expect the AI to reciprocate in kind with loyalty but THE AI DOES NOT HAVE THAT FEELING.
I recently joined a hot fintech only to have several offices closed and people sacked 5 months later, in order to keep an IPO route looking shiny (it wasn't).
My advice to juniors is do not sacrifice for that machine.
> I found that having experiences with coworkers from outside of a work settings would significantly strengthen the relationship with those coworkers.
Why can’t work just be work? Do you really want to spent time with your coworkers outside of work? Some of us have families to care for. And some of us have actual friends that we like to hangout with. Coworkers aren’t my buddies or family. We are a team to get things done for a price.
As a young person, work is basically the default way to meet people after moving to a large city. I have real friends outside work now but they all started as colleagues or friends of colleagues. I'd also prefer to work with people I can trust over anonymous colleagues any day.
I'm not saying it's the only way (it's probably not good or healthy) but this sentiment is super common among my peers. When we're older I suspect that will change.
I'm happy this is the case for you, but this is not everyone's reality. If you have no friends and family post-college, socializing during work is the only thing preventing you from going into deep depression.
Very common example of how this can happen: Moving to another country for work.
I agree with you. I was just adding that people who are strongly against non-remote work should at least be aware that this can literally kill people, meaning that companies should not yolo the decision of how it should operate in this regard.
I am not strongly against non-remote work. I am strongly against having to hang out with your coworkers after work. I think those two are different things.
We already spent enough time at work, I should be allowed my own free time to relax without feeling the peer pressure to be part of the team outside work hours.
I agree. For me it's not required to know someone personally to be professional, establish trust, and have a great working relationship. If a friendship arises naturally, then great, but I also dislike the forced team building events (or after hour hangouts) companies think are essential for a team to work well together.
And yet I've learned that not everyone is like this, especially nowadays with remote work growing in popularity. Some people do feel that a personal connection helps in a professional setting. So I tend to begrudgingly accept this and make an effort to do this for the team.
you spend about 50% of waking hours with co-workers, it doesn't make sense to me that you would want to ignore them. The majority of my friends are former/current co-workers.
If I am spending 50% of my waking hours with them, how exactly am I ignoring them? You can still make friends at work without having to hang out after work. I shouldn't be obliged to spent 75% of my waking hours with them.
And how do you know they don't want the same thing? I know tons of people that would rather spent time with their loved ones than their coworkers. You might want to rethink your definition of ignore, because it sounds very much like unhealthy peer pressure.
> Getting out of the house and into a setting with other human beings builds a heck of a lot more socialization into your day than sitting at home in your office. While it’s certainly possible that some people working from home will choose to socialize more, I predict that the majority of people will socialize less as they have fewer opportunities to meet and talk with people built into their days.
When you are in control, you are in control of everything. Means that if you need to get exercise everyday, you need to make it a habit to go and walk outside during your remote working day.
As for socializing, I find that very reductive to think that "the people you work with in an office are great for socialization". Nope, I don't choose those people, so I'd rather invest my time socializing with people I choose, which will probably not be the people I am forced to work with.
> As for socializing, I find that very reductive to think that "the people you work with in an office are great for socialization". Nope, I don't choose those people, so I'd rather invest my time socializing with people I choose, which will probably not be the people I am forced to work with.
I agree. I'm happy to "socialise" to the extent that it facilitates getting work done. But I'm not looking for new pals, I'm just here to do the work and get paid, I have a separate life outside of the workplace. Maybe it's just an age thing but I don't want to do company pizza night, or company skiing or company drinks, for me work is a means to an end.
Don't get me wrong, I really like the company I presently work for, get on well with my colleagues, even push the boat out and do a few extra hours to get a project over the line or to help others, but it is just work and that's it.
I suppose it's a different mindset. I'm not friends with anyone at work in the sense that we hang out after hours, or that I'd call them if I needed help with a personal problem. But it's still hard for me to think of it as "just work and that's it". I'm glad to be "work pals" with these people and want the best for them personally as well as professionally.
I agree that work is a means to an end, but the people I work with aren't similarly means.
How do remote startups function? Back in my startup days, my cofounder & I lived in the same house when we were founding. We slept in the same room in order to synchronize sleep schedules as well. Bandwith was (as expected) super high. Immediate communication over issues while still allowing for uninterrupted work time. Being able to point at your screen and say "take a look" is super powerful.
It reminds me of ML where the bottleneck is often the bandwith between the GPUs.
And as expected working side by side / living in the same house dramatically increased productivity. I couldn't imagine a remote employee being as motivated.
TL;DR -- startups need a certain workaholic mentality / intensity. In-person work can provide this.
In defense of remote: We didn't have a commute, which saved us at least 1.5 hours a day.
I work at such a startup. We all live in different countries and different timezones. Everybody has a high level of autonomy and decision-making working on his own stuff. Most of product communication happens in comments on Jira and technical — in PR comments on Github, both of which are completely async. There's also Slack for some realtime interaction, but it's okay not to be online. At average, I'd say that I have one or two video calls a week, and I don't feel that I need more.
It's one of the most productive environments I had in my entire 15 year career.
I run a globally distributed startup - we still have very responsive communication but a) it’s not everyone on the team that’s a workaholic since not everyone prefers to be always “on” like that, and so that’s fine, they contribute in other ways; b) we have to be a bit more strategic about timing since you can’t powwow with someone unless that person’s awake, and c) we spend more effort explicitly aligning since misalignment can waste a ton of time, so in a way it’s upgraded the quality of our communication. I personally think it’s been fine, and as a result we have a much bigger hiring pool and are getting as much done as any startup in SV I’ve worked at.
Hate to sound dismissive but I've worked with people who can't communicate very well unless it's in person. Writing/reading causes a lot of misunderstandings for them due to comprehension or patience, and video calls don't seem to work very well for them as they are typical scheduled and have less body language.
This is fine, but I do disagree with those people saying "remote doesn't work" for startups, etc. It's just them.
> How do remote startups function? Back in my startup days, my cofounder & I lived in the same house when we were founding. We slept in the same room in order to synchronize sleep schedules as well. Bandwith was (as expected) super high. Immediate communication over issues while still allowing for uninterrupted work time. Being able to point at your screen and say "take a look" is super powerful.
I'm starting a startup now. There is no way that I am ever going to be pointing at a screen and telling my cofounder "take a look". My cofounder will not be a tech guy, he'll be a sales, marketing and customer-contact guy.
A business is "product + distribution".
There is very little point in having two cofounders who are both focusing only one of the above two variables. I think it is a recipe for failure, and so I will not be doing that.
"Certain types of companies need a certain workaholic mentality"
The way you describe led to monoculture and I hope this isn't the only way to do things.
Wasn't there a saying that your software will resemble your company structure? I don't know if a software resembling two people sleeping in an office is a good structure to base your software on.
I may be a bit of a cynic here, but it surely sounds like this guy doesn't have any sort of life outside work. "It gets you out of the house", "it helps you socialise"?
And all that after having worked in the Chrome codebase, whose devs are from all over the world.
it gets _YOU_ out of the house, it helps _YOU_ socialize.. don't worry him. In all honesty it sounds like he'd benefit if _YOU_ returned back to the office.
For me, I agree that remote work doesn't work as well as collocation. Remote work is great for workers but terrible for managers and company efficiency.
The type of work I do doesn't translate well to JIRA tickets. It takes 3 whiteboard sessions, 5 meetings, and a water cooler conversation to come up with something resembling a work item that isn't a complete waste of someone's time.
Remote work is great for workers who can pull work from a queue. It's terrible for the people trying to fill the queue with quality work items.
So I guess it all depends on what you want to do with your career.
> However, even the fiercest distributed team advocates agree that an office provides some benefits that are difficult to replicate on a distributed team. I want to dig into some of those benefits.
Or, how to say you don’t read hacker news without saying you don’t read hacker news.
I don’t disagree that offices have their benefit, but I do know where to find internet pundits who do!
In short, i do not believe that having an office-centric culture is a bad thing, nor that a remote culture is a bad thing either. It's just that there are people who will always lean towards one or the other and that's where the incompatibilities begin.
Personally, i'd want a 100% remote position and doubt that i'll be going back to spending my time commuting just to sit in an office. For others, the opposite applies - they might not be able to wait for being able to properly return to offices soon enough. Each of us might have our own valid (at least subjectively) arguments for pursuing these approaches. Hell, with slightly different life circumstances i might change my opinions (e.g. having kids around the house) or vice versa (wanting to travel more or move and not be bogged down).
It is when the guilt tripping and peer pressuring as well as brainwashing starts, with every team/company/culture advocating for their own "normal" as the only proper way to work that the problems start appearing. Everything from virtuous articles in favor of a particular approach or against another, to trying to gaslight or convince those easily swayed to conform to whatever they want.
That, in my eyes, is disingenuous and there will definitely be a lot of people looking for different jobs in the coming years, the so called "Great Resignation" (albeit there are also other factors to this, especially in other industries), after it became apparent that people can switch jobs without always relocating, something that's taken advantage of by many.
But what's the end result of this? Plenty of people quitting and taking the domain knowledge with themselves, which will make things worse for others in the short term and long term - but that's usually just a case of documentation/knowledge transfer/bus factor being bad. I do hope that the current circumstances allow more people to find jobs that are suitable for them, whatever those jobs may be.
This. I am always in a hurry and anxious, even if I leave the house with large advance, just because I am on the "mission" to get to work and have to counteract public transport that can be delayed etc.
Instead when I am out in a park I do truly enjoy my green surroundings and relax.
My biggest gripe with returning to the office is the inability to determine and enforce priority.
At home, if you slack me and you’re not my top priority right now, I can ignore you or politely reply that I’ll be with you shortly.
In the office folks can simply walk over and tap me on the shoulder. Due to social norms, I cannot simply ignore you and most like will need to devote my full attention to your questions.
Essentially, my actions throughout the day make a subtle shift from proactive activities to reactive.
If I’m not the only person to experience this, I wonder what the macro effect is on an organization?
Personally I was mostly just happy to be getting back into the office occasionally because I'm tired of working 3 feet away from my bed. I can see work-from-home working really well if you are lucky enough to have a big place with an extra office, but for me it totally and completely sucked.
I think this is where most of the divide is coming from. Single engineers with studio apartments have no interest in working from home (at least I don't) because I'm just working alone from my box all day, save for the time when I go to the coffee shop every day.
My most productive hours are away from home, at the coffee shop, even without my relatively nice wfh setup.
Some claim that people who don't like wfh wrap too much of their social life around work, but I'd just like to be around people while I work rather than sitting in my bedroom alone for 8 hours a day. This might change when I find a partner etc but I'd really prefer a hybrid environment for now.
* They get up earlier than me and, by default, would end up taking the living room when also working from home. I'm sure they would have been receptive to trading off who used which room, but trading workspaces is kind of a hassle.
* I don't need to spend every single minute with them.
I know two startups started both in 2020. They started out with roughly on the same idea, having raised similar funding.
Startup #1 decided to do full-remote from day one. After a year, the founder of the full-remote startup had little progress: they ended up figuring out how to work, had to fire people "not cut out" for remote work, and then realized they really make meaningful progress after week-long retreats as a team which they now do on an adhoc basis.
Startup #2 stayed in-office even during the pandemic in the same location - following local guidelines on COVID rules as with all businesses. They did this because this was the way the founders knew how to work, and they knew that full-remote would be a steep learning curve and slow down their iteration speed as they are rushing to find product-market-fit. They only hired for onsite 2-3 days a week, and paid very well in return.
Startup #2 found PMF in year 1, and now are at ~30 people, ~100 paying businesses, growing strong, ready for their Series A. They have engineering, product, sales and customer support in the same office. As this startup grows, they are putting remote-friendly policies in place as they realize they'll have a hard time hiring and retaining without. But their core culture is collaborating frequently as in-person.
Startup #1 is looking for PMF and are still learning how to work efficiently as a full-remote team. In this sense, they are well ahead of Startup #2. In product progress, they are behind. For runway, they are about the same, as Startup #1 runs with a smaller team than #2.
In my social media feed, almost everyone advocates for full-remote work, as from a personal point of view this is the preference of most people. No commute, more flexible work hours and choosing where to live and where to work from are all undoubtedly huge benefits for any individual.
Still, my observation is that working full-remote or full-distributed has a learning path that takes time and effort. There are people, managers and teams are not there just yet. And we might learn that certain team phases, team dynamics and business environments are better fitted for full-remote or fully distributed versus one that has more "in-office" contact.
If we've learned anything from reading HN, a sample of two isn't statistically significant, especially when talking about startups. I've known people in several startups and very few cashed out - and they were all in office.
It's interesting that you state that Startup #2 paid very well in return for coming into the office. I get paid very well for doing my job, regardless of whether it is remote or in office. If Startup #1 has decided that remote means they don't need to pay very well, then that is probably your root cause.
My takeaway from that is very early startups should be in person, but beyond that very early stage remote will make sense especially as devs can be picky and want to work remote.
And mine is that you can't tell much from that anecdote. The failing startup might be failing for any number of reasons. There are counterpoints of fully remote startups that have worked out well. So basically, it's just noise. There isn't even an attempt made at explaining why is working remotely the problem, they might not be suited to it, or that they tried before being ready for it as OP stated.
Yes, In Person is always better where there is more "chaos", but for established companies where most people have "tasks" to do, remote works just fine.
Ha! This happened in the startup where I worked in 2020: CEO was stubborn to work in the office so he implemented "all official guidelines " to keep some people in the office. There were 2 COVID outbreaks in the 10 months I worked there during the pandemic (I refused to go to the office). I later found a better paying fully remote job with sensible leadership .
It's a bit more complex: being a team means being a community and since we are not (sigh [1]) Borg but still being social animals we need a certain physical interaction BUT we do need that for certain aspects, while we can avoid that for certain others. For instance a remote university is horrific, students and teachers need to be physically together at least for the majority of the time, a research team need to be together equally BUT a company that do not do much research once formed a team with a bit of punctual and casual physical interaction like few events per year do not need much the social part, individuals do have their local sociability separated from the work and while it's a change of culture and model can work well if well done and tested a bit.
Actual issues came mostly IMO because of:
- lack of real distributed org and practice
- bad policies and tools
- the sense of being in a short transitory phase so no one really need to invest in such work form
In the end transports are and was for the entire human history the most expensive thing we need, if we can have many advantages of being together without the transport and physical presence need that's so good we need to work around issues as much as possible.
[1] before the horrendous idea of a Borg's queen of course, because the Borg represent a PERFECT society despite the light S.T. draw on them, a fully integrated and egalitarian society where individual are really peers, all decisions are made in a pure Democracy and they can even makes memories of any individual survive in the community
“Zapier, a great distributed company, famously has quarterly offsites for its teams where everyone meets in person to replicate this effect. However, I highly suspect that most big companies won’t make any such effort to do this. Even if they do, once budgets get stressed, it seems likely this will be the first “perk” to go: its benefits are hard to quantify and it certainly seems frivolous to the short-sighted.”
This seems to contradict the argument for offices. Companies save money by having fewer offices, so their budgets should be improved. Also, if companies do not see the value of employees periodically meeting each other then why do management largely prefer face time in offices?
“Getting out of the house and into a setting with other human beings builds a heck of a lot more socialization”
Much of this article focuses on the workplace fulfilling out of work needs or out of work meetings fulfilling at work relationships. Why do people want and expect so much from their jobs? Why is that the place to fulfill ones social needs? Pursue hobbies and interests outside of work and meet people not tethered to your employer. These relationships are stronger and transcend work ties. Avoiding terrible commutes provides some of the time to pursue such ventures too.
I think its the google centric view of the article. All the perks google offer in their offices are tools to keep you in the office longer. Stay for the Gym, stay for Dinner or come in early for lunch. Considering that its naturally that they expect your social circle to be mostly other google employees.
The premise of this article, and in some way a major point to all "return to the office" arguments, is nothing more than an artifact of the system devised around the inability to work remotely. It is a secondary effect. It's not a deliberate benefit to working on location, it is just how things are when you have to spend all day in a room or building with other people who also have to do so. And there are also many non-beneficial secondary effects to having to commute to a location.
A technological revolution that changes how we need to do things is going to take away some of these secondary effects. But it will have it's own. Some of them will be positive and some will be negative. But overall we don't do things how we do them because we get to lay in beanbag chairs (at the office) or on the couch (at home) while working, we do them how we do them because they're the most efficient and reasonable way to do them. Commuting was once the most efficient way to do information work. With worldwide high bandwidth networking this is no longer the case, therefore we will stop commuting. Inertia slows this but it doesn't stop it.
> While working from home certainly increases the amount of control that people have over their day, it does so at the cost of essentially all of these chance encounters.
How much value do you actually get from those chance encounters? My experience, after years in everyday in the office, is very, very little. It's like playing lottery everyday, there's not much you earn under all probabilities.
And it's not like it's a potential Oasis while talking a long cool hike. Office can be a minefield.. maybe you get lucky, but the life distortion effect of a bad building are too strong to ignore.
Spend time with your real friends instead of your coworkers, get out of the house on your own, nobody is forcing you to stay inside just because you don't have to go to an office. Work from a coworking space, distributed/remote doesn't mean everybody at home.
It's crazy to see how unhealthy people's life can be when work is the only thing they have.
This is an important issue. My own experience is limited to New York City, so I can only comment intelligently on what I've seen here. Over the last 18 months I spoke to 30 entrepreneurs about this issue, and I've tried to synthesize what I have learned. I've posted some of this information previously in various comments, in particular, that many entrepreneurs seem to put a value on vague and intangible (but apparently important) aspects of in-person work. Like I said in an earlier comment, I've had clients who offered mid level software engineers an extra $30k a year to come into the office. I've also summarized all of this in a blog post. For anyone interested, see "What work can be done from home? What work needs to be done at an office?"
That's a good argument, but I didn't see the "we want the best people we can get with what we want to pay regardless of where they are." Which is what some companies do, they hire from all over the world and pay them in the same range.
Why should companies hire only from the US if there are as good or better people elsewhere?
You're looking at it from the cost reduction perspective, but work shouldn't be something you save money on, but invest it the best you can to get the best product.
In summary, looks like the CEO and CTO of your sample companies don't know how to collaborate remotely. Which is natural because it's not intuitive. And if you don't know and don't want to learn, or happen to be at a niche not amenable to remote collaboration, sure, stay at an office.
I did sort of touch on this in the essay when I wrote:
"If these experts insist “I’m only willing to educate you on a Zoom call, I’ll educate you via video” then I have the option of hiring any expert in the world, I don’t need to hire an expert in the USA. If I need to educate myself on a set of technologies, so as to evaluate competing software architectures, then I would prefer to meet with experts in-person, but if for some reason I had to rely on communication via Zoom or Slack, there is no reason for me to hire someone in the USA. In such cases, the only reason I would hire a remote worker in the USA is if they were the greatest expert in the world on a subject that I wanted to learn. "
But I go into much greater detail in my book. I devote a whole chapter to this in my book.
The flaw in that reasoning is it assumes that anyone is able to get the greatest expert in the world.
Reality for most companies who hire remotely is that they just try to get the best person they can find within their time, monetary and other constraints. Many times they hire from the US. They can't access actual world class talent, who is very busy and can be really expensive (or isn't readily discoverable). Or even if they can, they can't fill their staff just with them.
> Furthermore, the spontaneous and critically important break-outs (small conversations) that happen at team off-sites or conferences
I guess I've missed out, but in 20 years in the industry I've literally never had any critically important break-outs from office or off-sites or hallway conversations.
Important work is intentional, and rarely accidental.
Don't worry. Managers will never let distributed or remote be the default. People would eventually realize that we don't really need managers except a couple times a year. They need to be in-person so they can be seen around the office, so people will assume they're necessary.
I have yet to see anyone who said their manager is their friend and continue to be so. I've been burnt far too many times. I'm never befriending my manager.
We do need to build human trust and relationships, and you can't do that with remote easily. Also, communications are slower and full of paper cuts that will make any task requiring to gather a lot from different people harder with remote.
Those 2 things make onboarding much harder.
Young people are also the one that are paying the most cost from remote:
- they are the ones with the less autonomy, which makes remote either very unproductive or make the task super hard.
- they don't learn anything about politics, which remote hides from view, and maybe reduces a little, but doesn't remove.
- they are already deep in the culture distractions, which is incredibly tempting in remote.
How course, remote work has so many benefits it may very well offset all that. Time will tell I guess.
There are a lot of alternative methods for bonding in an online space. I've been a gamer and run guilds where we never saw each other yet people built such strong connections they traveled cross country to meet up by choice not force years after. (and multiple people got married)
The idea that this is only possible in meat space is such an antiquated mindset.
Think outside the box. There are a number of companies offering tools, one we use is Donut. https://www.donut.com/blog/ Once a week, I am randomly peered with someone for a half hour coffee. It's been great and I meet people not just in engineering.
The company I work for is still tiny, so we don’t know how it’s going to scale, but we’ve been spending the money we would spend on an office just traveling to work together either collectively or in small groups on an as-needed, voluntary basis. Some have more flexibility around travel, some less, but we all like and care about each other so someone is always willing to go the extra mile when someone else can’t travel.
This only works because the enterprise is a COVID baby, and so the “base load” workflow is totally remote, we’ve never known anything different. This makes being in person pleasant and useful but almost never strictly necessary.
I do like having an in office job, but with the flexibility of working from home as needed.
I don't even mind the commute as much. What I absolutely hate is open offices. I want my own office where I can have some privacy to think and have space.
I expected this to be about system design, not team design.
I question really only the last claim. Integrated doesn't beat distributed every time. Rather, spending money/effort beats hoping for the best. Every time.
To that end, if we will see this work, we will see ways of increasing effort in the area. My gut is that this will be by getting more ways of encouraging inefficient encounters. Think of it in terms of hits. You can try and ensure your one effort is a hit. Or you can do what you can to maximize the effectiveness of an effort, while also increasing the number of efforts you make.
Seriously. I opened the comments section (I don't read the article unless the comments seem excited about it. Life is too short), and I expected people to be talking about how K8s and cloud is so complicated. I'd have been super interested in a story about how to achieve vertical scalability.
My company expects us back at work 3 days a week. I go 2 days. I'm partially deaf and I do badly with social cues. I don't want to socialize with my colleagues. I'd rather work from home and cuddle my cats and dog when I'm taking a break. I love them more than I like people I work with, irrespective of which company I'm at. I'm waiting to shift to a completely remote company one day. My employer doesn't have to give me a social life they deem fit. Pay me and I'll make friends outside of work.
Distributed was always an alternative. The pandemic just made it popular among people who never tried it before. These kinds of arguments in favor of office culture seem like a reflex action resisting any change.
things like starbucks or wework or whatever shared office space rentable by the hour are a better solution for this then big office spaces that stay empty most of the time.
instead of obsessing over what will be the "new default", it's sometimes better to sit back, relax and watch the pieces fall where they may , as some of the forces here are irreversible. There is always a capacity and will for people to produce work, and it will find its way to productive use regardless of whether they job is distributed or not. we are still at the beginning of this
Incidentally , academics have been used to this distributed mode for decades, with conferences purposely organized to provide opportunities for meshing mixing and friction.
”While it’s certainly possible to boot up Among Us during work or schedule Zoom lunches between random teammates, the set of remote bonding activities is significantly more limited than the set of in-person bonding activities.”
I’d like to see this revisited once VR / AR is more mature. Apple’s and Meta’s new headsets are just around the corner.
COVID caused a revolution guys -lets not lose sight of that just because we miss the ritual of the office.
in his post, looks like OP wants the team to have occasional meetings and more in-person meetups.. sure I'm fine with that, covid permitting. BUT
if a Remote lifestyle allows me to check in code, manage teams and be productive while at the same time caring for my family, extended family, save commute time, or if I have the means, to sit on a beach or in a forest and do my work, why shouldn't we prefer that flexible way of working, at the expense of some added communication overhead ... why do we need to enforce the ritual of the office at all -ie, lets DOWNSIZE the office. make it less relevant, sure we cant give it up completely for many organizations or projects..
And especially for those of us who work in shitty companies (and there are many of us) we know that some workplaces can be like this: https://youtu.be/jg047oJf1B4?t=58 -anything that lets people work remotely or gets away from the hell of being a wage slave should be an option..
It makes me sad if future generations of programmers never have the experience of working with a team in-person. I know it doesn't suit everyone's work style or life style. I'm not even arguing it's more productive. But it can be a lot more fun!
I agree completely with this article. And I understand fully if you don't. But for me, nothing I have done in remote work compares to my in-person work at really well-functioning companies.
I struggle to recall a single memory of my remote working career older than 4 months old. But my head is full of memories of my in-person work because, while sometimes grueling, was often full of fun, surprises, bonding experiences, challenging conversations, war rooms etc.
Most of all I worry that our younger employees don't know what they've missed out on. I hope they can find a way to develop great memories of their own in this brave new world.
I think the author doesn’t take in account that some companies are being forced to hire remotely due to the shortage of professionals in the Software industry.
I think the biggest problem is that these companies all seem to establish themselves in the most expensive metro areas. Even with the good salaries of being a software engineer, a lot of people would hate to feel like most of their money is going towards taxes, rent, etc... and forget about being able to buy a decent house in the bay area, the housing prices seem to continually increase upward while the majority of the population is left renting. Most of my well paid coworkers in the bay area hate commuting to work because they live like an hour away.
It seems healthiest for companies and people to choose: have all-remote or all-in-person. It’s the muddled hybrid model that’s the worst of all worlds.
You were right with the first part alone - let the teams choose. Hybrid worked for me and my team pre-pandemic, where we had no emphasis on location at all, so some people worked remotely full time, and the rest were free to come in to the office at their discretion. We would get together periodically (and deliberately), but outside of a few times a year, there was no emphasis on location at all. Most days, you wouldn't know who was in the office or not until the cams came on during standup.
It was the best of both worlds. 3/5 days at the office was great.
It gave the benefit of socialising and collaboration, with the flexibility of being at home for visiting home contractors, bulk deliveries, or somewhere where you could take a deep dive into something with no interruptions.
There is a disinformation campaign against remote work. The likely culprit behind it are commercial real estate interests and good old fashioned corporate leaders with their head buried in the sand.
Ed Zitron’s Substack has been following and reporting on the remote work propaganda machine for over a year.
I don't really understand why (relatively) over paid US Software Engineers are so keen on remote work. The inevitable conclusion is the rapid decrease in salary paid.
hm? Reading 'distributed' as 'decentral' ...thinking about: Once there was a time when 'some' try to track 'how informations spread' by using protocols... hu sounds off-topic... (-;
I have yet to work for a company that buys me lunch, much less annual ski trips. Hell, coffee hasn't been provided at any of my jobs, I've always had to pitch into a coffee pool just to have it. That's not to even mention getting to go to conferences. If I wanted to attend a conference, it would be coming out of my wallet and vacation time.
If you want me to collaborate, put it in on my schedule and pay me to do it. I'd say that most of these "spontaneous collision of people and ideas" happen during lunch. Guess what, that lunch which I am already paying for, is also unpaid time. Ever since I've been working from home, my lunch hour is mine. I get to unwind, read or watch tv, all while eating a healthy meal.
Finally let's talk about things that would get me back in the office. Shorter days, I have to commute a total of 2 hours a day, so I want my day to be 2-3 hours shorter. An actual office, with a window, door, temperature control, and some kind of noise isolation. I don't like working in those open office bullpens where I get to listen to salesmen screaming on the phone or secretaries sharing the latest gossip. Start screening people for personal hygiene. I get so tired of having to work with a heavy smoker or someone who can't be bothered to shower before showing up to work.