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I’ve been a remote engineer for over a decade, but only recently switched to a hybrid schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays. IMO, these two days are effectively us

I’ve been a remote engineer for over a decade, but only recently switched to a hybrid schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays. IMO, these two days are effectively useless for any kind of productive technical work. There are simply too many visual distractions, interruptions, and a complete lack of comfort in an office. …But I do enjoy these in-office days for what they make up for in remote work: Face to face chats; Real time human bonding; A sense of place. The office is just a socially accepted excuse to get everyone out of their homes and together for a few hours. I’m especially grateful that our cofounders understand why we should actually be at the office, and that any expectation of “being more productive” is nothing more but a polite fiction. Ironically, our two days in the office are mostly spent just outside the building. Technical chats over lunch, 1 on 1 meetings as a walk around the neighborhood, and drinks in the evening. That’s what hybrid should be. I’ll send my pull requests at 3 am while in my comfy chair at home. As for the commercial real estate market, I truly believe they’re fucked in the long run. There aren’t enough jobs like my Montessori arrangement that justify all the buildings in their portfolio. Hell, we couldn’t even go back to full-office because our team is so distributed! Personally, I think this is commodification coming back to bite short-term economics applied to financial districts. We don’t need a Chipotle on every corner. We don’t need another $20 box salad store. We need neighborhoods that people want to be in for reasons other than work! I’m guessing that in the coming months there’s gonna be talks of a real estate bailout. Investors have entwined their holdings into everyone’s retirement plans, and will no doubt appear on the nightly news wearing a vest made out of dynamite. They will threaten to take us all down with them. Such a shame that they’ve over-leveraged their position. Did they forget that we already have nothing to lose? The irony will be lost on them.

gochi 3y ago
>We need neighborhoods that people want to be in for reasons other than work! Every other reason eventually boils down to this very point. Turns out, specialized districts were a massive city planning mistake.
- jnwatson 3y ago
  Dunno. I don’t need a cement plant on my block.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    At this point single use zoning in the US has departed a long, long way from ‘exclude harmful to health’ uses from residences. And these days state laws and building codes do much to prevent these anyways.
  - nkrisc 3y ago
    No, but a restaurant and grocery store around the corner would nice.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Grocery stores around the corner do not work in spread out neighborhoods because the Krogers/Costcos/Albertsons/Walmarts will be able to offer lower price due economies of scale, and anyone with a car will choose to drive 10min, or stop on their way home, to save money rather than go to the higher priced grocery store around the corner.
      - rhaway84773 3y ago
        Do you think larger grocery stores don’t exist in city downtowns? I searched for Whole Foods locations and they seem to have about 13 in Manhattan itself. There’s a Costco in Manhattan. And there are several other major grocery stores some unique to New York. There are also large independent grocery stores and independent online grocery stores that will do hourly deliveries (the 15 mins deliveries thankfully seem to have largely died out). And that’s before you get to the hundreds of farmers markets. And how about all the butchers, seafood stores, cheese shops, spice stores, etc. And then you get the international grocery stores with Korean, Japanese, Indian, Chinese grocery stores. Ah, and you have 24/7 bodegas on newrly every corner if all those don’t work for you.
latchkey 3y ago
> We don’t need a Chipotle on every corner. We don’t need another $20 box salad store. These are the only types of business that can afford the rents though. Even if you get another lower cost place in there, they have to cut corners on quality and end up going out of business or just being really bad food. How do you overcome that?
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Lower the rent.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    Easier said than done. Limited space == Higher rent. People are downvoting me, but not really understanding what I'm saying. Even if there is more empty space, what is happening is that landlords are leaving them empty, which keeps the rents higher because there is still limited effective availability. They aren't going to rent to a small business because they don't want to get locked into a 5-10 year lease on a small business when they can potentially wait a bit and rent to a larger business who will pay more and likely survive longer.
    - wewtyflakes 3y ago
      Isn't the main thrust of the argument that supply has outpaced demand in commercial real estate?
    - profile53 3y ago
      Isn’t the problem that there is more empty space than needed now so the rents *should* fall?
      - latchkey 3y ago
        Retail != Office Retail rent will fall because nobody is in the offices. Retail business will close because of less traffic, and thus there will be more space. But, retail leases are typically 5-10+ years. Why would a landlord lower the rent now to a small business and get stuck in a long lease, when they don't know if the office space will recover and the big businesses will want to come back? It is a game of chicken.
tpmoney 3y ago
>…But I do enjoy these in-office days for what they make up for in remote work: >Face to face chats; Real time human bonding; A sense of place. The office is just >a socially accepted excuse to get everyone out of their homes and together for a >few hours. > >I’m especially grateful that our cofounders understand why we should actually be >at the office, and that any expectation of “being more productive” is nothing more >but a polite fiction. Ironically, our two days in the office are mostly spent just >outside the building. Technical chats over lunch, 1 on 1 meetings as a walk around >the neighborhood, and drinks in the evening. That’s what hybrid should be. I’ll >send my pull requests at 3 am while in my comfy chair at home. I feel like these sorts of things are part of "being more productive" though. Having a good rapport with your co-workers, having a chance to talk about side things, having a chance for people whose domains don't normally cross to hear what's going on elsewhere. These are all parts of being a well functioning and productive team. It's a real shame that larger organizations tend to lose sight of that, but it's also a shame in my opinion that this whole fight over remote vs in office work has gotten the workers pretending that nothing but the numbers matter. This really feels like a "be careful what you wish for" moment.
- klodolph 3y ago
  > I feel like these sorts of things are part of "being more productive" though. Yeah. There are some things which can be more difficult when you’re remote. Working through a design—it’s so much better when you have two people in a room with a whiteboard or paper. Onboarding. Going through a gnarly code review (where you really want some major changes to the code before it gets shipped). Debriefing after a meeting, where you and your teammate know that the meeting was a complete waste of time, but you need a chance to kvetch about it offline and off the record.
phpisthebest 3y ago
>>But I do enjoy these in-office days for what they make up for in remote work: Face to face chats; Real time human bonding; A sense of place. Every-time I am in the office I remember a scene from the west wing where the quote is "He thinks decisions are made in meetings...." expressing that most decisions are made in informal discussions in hallways, or impromptu mini-meetings standing in someones office door. Meetings are where we tell everyone the decisions that were already made It is hard to replicate that in a remote work environment, maybe that is better I dont know, but for I see the advantage of both
tetha 3y ago
> I’ve been a remote engineer for over a decade, but only recently switched to a hybrid schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays. IMO, these two days are effectively useless for any kind of productive technical work. There are simply too many visual distractions, interruptions, and a complete lack of comfort in an office. > > …But I do enjoy these in-office days for what they make up for in remote work: Face to face chats; Real time human bonding; A sense of place. The office is just a socially accepted excuse to get everyone out of their homes and together for a few hours. This is why we've switched to a full week every month, which amounts to 1 - 1.2 days per week of presence. This week is used for planning, discussions, more complex knowledge sharing. We've just found it more effective to plan some things with post-its and a whiteboard. Sure, things like Miro exist, but if you combine the friction from the wonderful video call solution teams, miro, microphones, internet uplinks and such, it becomes a real distraction. But yeah, during these weeks, we don't do much technical work beyond keeping the lights on and pushing the simple service requests through the queue.
CharlieDigital 3y ago
When I ran a remote team on the opposite coast, I'd visit once every 3-4 weeks for a week at a time. While we'd spend time working, we'd also plan things like field trips (hiking, kayaking, museum visits), we'd go out and get lunch and dinner, bring our Switch consoles and have Mario Kart tournaments in the conference room, and other things like celebrating birthdays, births, anniversaries, and so on. For remote teams, using the together time to focus on productivity and work is a broken model. Glad that your founders get it!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gmadsen 3y ago
I'd say it's productive it the sense that creating in person relationships has a direct effect on getting things done that require large amounts of people.
rwmj 3y ago
> Hell, we couldn’t even go back to full-office because our team is so distributed! Isn't this a problem even for coming into the office 2 days a week? My experience is that I work on a team which is really distributed. We have people in nearly every continent (including Africa and South America, but not Antarctica), so getting to an office 2 days a week is not an option. We have regular video conferences though.
gumby 3y ago
> I’m especially grateful that our cofounders understand why we should actually be at the office, and that any expectation of “being more productive” is nothing more but a polite fiction. I presume the interactions and such you describe increase your net productivity, much as taking the time to study something does. Neither show up directly in Taylorist metrics like “PRs closed”
eek2121 3y ago
Our company does regular meetups throughout the year. No need for a hybrid schedule really. We are all located throughout the US. The company pays for all expenses for those that choose to visit on site. This is without limits or restrictions. It STILL costs them less than maintaining a large office in a popular metro area. I see my coworkers a total of maybe 4x a year. We also have regular 'shoot the shit' Zoom meets. That is honestly enough interaction for me. As an autistic person with ADHD, office environments are 'difficult' to say the least. Thankfully I've been fully remote for about a decade as well. Wouldn't go back, and thankfully I don't need to. There are plenty of remote jobs available and I don't see that changing short of some type of short-sighted government regulation. Smaller companies have realized that office space and the infrastructure to support it is a huge money sink compared to just having employees work from home.
andrei_says_ 3y ago
Not being forced into an office n times per week has allowed me to work from different parts of the country including Hawaii for over a month. This beats face to face small talk and $25 food court lunches beyond measure. I make sure to socialize on zoom in every call, my focus is through the roof as well as my productivity.
amerkhalid 3y ago
> I’m especially grateful that our cofounders understand why we should actually be at the office, and that any expectation of “being more productive” is nothing more but a polite fiction. They sound like great leaders. I also work for a great company which is very pro-remote work. I have been working from home for several years before pandemic. I lived near office, so every once in awhile I would go in to take a break from programming and socialize. It is great for those purposes especially once you are out of college, it is really hard to make new friends. And this is the one aspect about office work that I miss. But it is not a company's job to provide friends. Also I realized people who lacked real skills but were good at socializing were the ones who went to office often and they were the ones who were climbing corporate ladders faster. And I have tried hard to understand why return to office is good for business but don’t see any point. Only explanation that makes sense to me is that people who are good at politics are having hard time playing politics in remote world. They have no other skills, technical or business. But they have already climbed corporate ladder and feeling powerless. Now they need people in offices for their personal benefits, not for company’s.

gochi 3y ago

>We need neighborhoods that people want to be in for reasons other than work! Every other reason eventually boils down to this very point. Turns out, specialized districts were a massive city planning mistake.

jnwatson 3y ago
Dunno. I don’t need a cement plant on my block.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  At this point single use zoning in the US has departed a long, long way from ‘exclude harmful to health’ uses from residences. And these days state laws and building codes do much to prevent these anyways.
- nkrisc 3y ago
  No, but a restaurant and grocery store around the corner would nice.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Grocery stores around the corner do not work in spread out neighborhoods because the Krogers/Costcos/Albertsons/Walmarts will be able to offer lower price due economies of scale, and anyone with a car will choose to drive 10min, or stop on their way home, to save money rather than go to the higher priced grocery store around the corner.
    - rhaway84773 3y ago
      Do you think larger grocery stores don’t exist in city downtowns? I searched for Whole Foods locations and they seem to have about 13 in Manhattan itself. There’s a Costco in Manhattan. And there are several other major grocery stores some unique to New York. There are also large independent grocery stores and independent online grocery stores that will do hourly deliveries (the 15 mins deliveries thankfully seem to have largely died out). And that’s before you get to the hundreds of farmers markets. And how about all the butchers, seafood stores, cheese shops, spice stores, etc. And then you get the international grocery stores with Korean, Japanese, Indian, Chinese grocery stores. Ah, and you have 24/7 bodegas on newrly every corner if all those don’t work for you.

latchkey 3y ago

> We don’t need a Chipotle on every corner. We don’t need another $20 box salad store. These are the only types of business that can afford the rents though. Even if you get another lower cost place in there, they have to cut corners on quality and end up going out of business or just being really bad food. How do you overcome that?

lotsofpulp 3y ago
Lower the rent.
- latchkey 3y ago
  Easier said than done. Limited space == Higher rent. People are downvoting me, but not really understanding what I'm saying. Even if there is more empty space, what is happening is that landlords are leaving them empty, which keeps the rents higher because there is still limited effective availability. They aren't going to rent to a small business because they don't want to get locked into a 5-10 year lease on a small business when they can potentially wait a bit and rent to a larger business who will pay more and likely survive longer.
  - wewtyflakes 3y ago
    Isn't the main thrust of the argument that supply has outpaced demand in commercial real estate?
  - profile53 3y ago
    Isn’t the problem that there is more empty space than needed now so the rents *should* fall?
    - latchkey 3y ago
      Retail != Office Retail rent will fall because nobody is in the offices. Retail business will close because of less traffic, and thus there will be more space. But, retail leases are typically 5-10+ years. Why would a landlord lower the rent now to a small business and get stuck in a long lease, when they don't know if the office space will recover and the big businesses will want to come back? It is a game of chicken.

tpmoney 3y ago

>…But I do enjoy these in-office days for what they make up for in remote work: >Face to face chats; Real time human bonding; A sense of place. The office is just >a socially accepted excuse to get everyone out of their homes and together for a >few hours. > >I’m especially grateful that our cofounders understand why we should actually be >at the office, and that any expectation of “being more productive” is nothing more >but a polite fiction. Ironically, our two days in the office are mostly spent just >outside the building. Technical chats over lunch, 1 on 1 meetings as a walk around >the neighborhood, and drinks in the evening. That’s what hybrid should be. I’ll >send my pull requests at 3 am while in my comfy chair at home. I feel like these sorts of things are part of "being more productive" though. Having a good rapport with your co-workers, having a chance to talk about side things, having a chance for people whose domains don't normally cross to hear what's going on elsewhere. These are all parts of being a well functioning and productive team. It's a real shame that larger organizations tend to lose sight of that, but it's also a shame in my opinion that this whole fight over remote vs in office work has gotten the workers pretending that nothing but the numbers matter. This really feels like a "be careful what you wish for" moment.

klodolph 3y ago
> I feel like these sorts of things are part of "being more productive" though. Yeah. There are some things which can be more difficult when you’re remote. Working through a design—it’s so much better when you have two people in a room with a whiteboard or paper. Onboarding. Going through a gnarly code review (where you really want some major changes to the code before it gets shipped). Debriefing after a meeting, where you and your teammate know that the meeting was a complete waste of time, but you need a chance to kvetch about it offline and off the record.

phpisthebest 3y ago

>>But I do enjoy these in-office days for what they make up for in remote work: Face to face chats; Real time human bonding; A sense of place. Every-time I am in the office I remember a scene from the west wing where the quote is "He thinks decisions are made in meetings...." expressing that most decisions are made in informal discussions in hallways, or impromptu mini-meetings standing in someones office door. Meetings are where we tell everyone the decisions that were already made It is hard to replicate that in a remote work environment, maybe that is better I dont know, but for I see the advantage of both

tetha 3y ago

> I’ve been a remote engineer for over a decade, but only recently switched to a hybrid schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays. IMO, these two days are effectively useless for any kind of productive technical work. There are simply too many visual distractions, interruptions, and a complete lack of comfort in an office. > > …But I do enjoy these in-office days for what they make up for in remote work: Face to face chats; Real time human bonding; A sense of place. The office is just a socially accepted excuse to get everyone out of their homes and together for a few hours. This is why we've switched to a full week every month, which amounts to 1 - 1.2 days per week of presence. This week is used for planning, discussions, more complex knowledge sharing. We've just found it more effective to plan some things with post-its and a whiteboard. Sure, things like Miro exist, but if you combine the friction from the wonderful video call solution teams, miro, microphones, internet uplinks and such, it becomes a real distraction. But yeah, during these weeks, we don't do much technical work beyond keeping the lights on and pushing the simple service requests through the queue.

CharlieDigital 3y ago

When I ran a remote team on the opposite coast, I'd visit once every 3-4 weeks for a week at a time. While we'd spend time working, we'd also plan things like field trips (hiking, kayaking, museum visits), we'd go out and get lunch and dinner, bring our Switch consoles and have Mario Kart tournaments in the conference room, and other things like celebrating birthdays, births, anniversaries, and so on. For remote teams, using the together time to focus on productivity and work is a broken model. Glad that your founders get it!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gmadsen 3y ago

I'd say it's productive it the sense that creating in person relationships has a direct effect on getting things done that require large amounts of people.

rwmj 3y ago

> Hell, we couldn’t even go back to full-office because our team is so distributed! Isn't this a problem even for coming into the office 2 days a week? My experience is that I work on a team which is really distributed. We have people in nearly every continent (including Africa and South America, but not Antarctica), so getting to an office 2 days a week is not an option. We have regular video conferences though.

gumby 3y ago

> I’m especially grateful that our cofounders understand why we should actually be at the office, and that any expectation of “being more productive” is nothing more but a polite fiction. I presume the interactions and such you describe increase your net productivity, much as taking the time to study something does. Neither show up directly in Taylorist metrics like “PRs closed”

eek2121 3y ago

Our company does regular meetups throughout the year. No need for a hybrid schedule really. We are all located throughout the US. The company pays for all expenses for those that choose to visit on site. This is without limits or restrictions. It STILL costs them less than maintaining a large office in a popular metro area. I see my coworkers a total of maybe 4x a year. We also have regular 'shoot the shit' Zoom meets. That is honestly enough interaction for me. As an autistic person with ADHD, office environments are 'difficult' to say the least. Thankfully I've been fully remote for about a decade as well. Wouldn't go back, and thankfully I don't need to. There are plenty of remote jobs available and I don't see that changing short of some type of short-sighted government regulation. Smaller companies have realized that office space and the infrastructure to support it is a huge money sink compared to just having employees work from home.

andrei_says_ 3y ago

Not being forced into an office n times per week has allowed me to work from different parts of the country including Hawaii for over a month. This beats face to face small talk and $25 food court lunches beyond measure. I make sure to socialize on zoom in every call, my focus is through the roof as well as my productivity.

amerkhalid 3y ago

> I’m especially grateful that our cofounders understand why we should actually be at the office, and that any expectation of “being more productive” is nothing more but a polite fiction. They sound like great leaders. I also work for a great company which is very pro-remote work. I have been working from home for several years before pandemic. I lived near office, so every once in awhile I would go in to take a break from programming and socialize. It is great for those purposes especially once you are out of college, it is really hard to make new friends. And this is the one aspect about office work that I miss. But it is not a company's job to provide friends. Also I realized people who lacked real skills but were good at socializing were the ones who went to office often and they were the ones who were climbing corporate ladders faster. And I have tried hard to understand why return to office is good for business but don’t see any point. Only explanation that makes sense to me is that people who are good at politics are having hard time playing politics in remote world. They have no other skills, technical or business. But they have already climbed corporate ladder and feeling powerless. Now they need people in offices for their personal benefits, not for company’s.