8 ms·

Return to Office Is a Mistake

82 points by ankitdce 2y ago

ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related: Show HN: Return To Office Mandates suck https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39745254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39745254
fbdab103 2y ago
Are there any F500 companies remaining which have not had a RTO push? Not only has my company been increasingly pressuring RTO, they are getting rid of offices and even cubicles. You can now hotel in an open office hellscape. Return to office and double down on miserable working conditions. It feels like the execs just want to reinforce who is in charge.
- matt3210 2y ago
  Excessive open office plans are an overreaction to WFH lack of “spontaneous interaction”. I’d get more done if I had a door at work
- Izikiel43 2y ago
  Msft so far doesn’t have an rto policy company wide, it’s manager dependent.
- wetpaws 2y ago
  [dead]
dijit 2y ago
Lets be honest here, a very significant portion of business practices are caused because upper management do not trust the team they hired. Be it that they don't trust them to have the right idea, or trust them to do the work. Nearly all business practises we hate are caused by a measure of overt control over your daily time and a strict measuring of your time and tasks. Unfortunately: there's about 10-20% of people who genuinely shouldn't be working because they are untrustworthy, and things like remote work just enabled them to take multiple jobs or slack-off massively. So these practices mostly exist to deal with those people and the rest of us just suffer.
- throwitaway222 2y ago
  Actually it's a complicated effect. One person doing it often causes many people to do it. And its one of those things that doesn't replicate in an "in office" atmosphere.
- yakaccount4 2y ago
  I think there's a large pool of good talent that can't fully be trusted to do the right thing (not slack off), but can be employed successfully with sufficient guardrails (return to office). Loosely related anecdote why I feel so: For a while right after Apple started its mandatory RTO and ramped up Caffe Macs, the soda "grab n go" sections had an honor system - you paid your $1.25 for a coke and went on your way. Apparently there was a _lot_ of petty theft of drinks, so they have a person with an iPad check you off now, and I assume theft has basically plummeted since there's far less employees brazen enough to just barge off with one without checking off their name. So maybe the RTO is effective in someway? Or maybe the real lesson is that the soda should have been free to begin with.
  - galdosdi 2y ago
    You have to.... pay... for soda... at Apple? What the hell?
    - azinman2 2y ago
      You have to pay for food and drink. It’s not like Google etc.
    - IntelMiner 2y ago
      Call it the Apple tax
    - teaearlgraycold 2y ago
      Same at Nvidia. But it's subsidized. The argument I heard is it reduces food waste.
    - samplatt 2y ago
KerrAvon 2y ago
Even Apple’s execs are willfully blind on this. Utterly baffling. There’s plenty of room at Apple Park for everyone to have a door that closes, but they insist on doubling people up in offices or open-plan labs. The entire executive class across the industry is broken.
bee_rider 2y ago
If developers are more productive at home, how are businesses that rent big expensive buildings for no benefit (or negative value) not being wiped out in the market? I don’t want RTO either but this seems suspicious.
- janosdebugs 2y ago
  The companies mandating RTO seem to be in the few thousand employees and up range. My experience is that at those sizes a developer spends most of their time figuring out what and how to code, which is mostly done in meetings. Writing code in such a setup is a relatively small part of the work. Developer effectiveness doesn't have that large of an impact on their success, whereas organizational skills and leadership do.
- 0x5f3759df-i 2y ago
  Because developer productivity doesn't matter that much to big companies regardless of what they say. Their margins are high, and it's why google can have an entire team making sure their AI can't generate images of white people and still rake in more cash than god from their search monopoly.
- timwaagh 2y ago
  Because a lot of tech companies are monopolies and do not have to compete. They can do what they want.
- sham1 2y ago
  Markets don't work rationally and the demand for RTO isn't from developers. Also, non-IT stuff can also keep office rental businesses up and running.
1letterunixname 2y ago
RTO is all about control. It's an FU to your expenses, your time, your family, and your mental health.
- bmitc 2y ago
  I'll admit that I kind of like being in the office. However, I absolutely loathe commuting. There's honestly not a good solution. The best solutions are all overly optimistic. The ideal would be that all the employees lived 5-10 minutes away.
  - Simulacra 2y ago
    I like the hybrid model. Two out of five days I need to be in the office, but I can pick and choose the days.
    - dheera 2y ago
      I prefer hybrid models don't dictate constraints like that and just set percentages that you should hit over time. I'm in a long distance relationship and I'm okay with going into the office 4-5 days a week for 6 out of 8 weeks as long as I can be full remote for 2 out of 8 weeks. But I am NOT okay with 2 days every week.
- aspanu 2y ago
  I personally have really not had this experience - especially given that a lot of companies in tech seem to have landed on either remote or hybrid (3 days in two days optional). I also think that this is fundamentally a city design issue (expenses, time, mental health), rather than a work issue.
system7rocks 2y ago
Correct. I am not in the software industry, but I love developers who have Sundays off and can come hang out with me.
Freedom2 2y ago
I disagree. Like many HNers, I align with Paul Graham's thoughts on the matter [1]. [1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/paul-graham-says-remote-does-225728000.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/paul-graham-says-remote-does-...
- choeger 2y ago
  "creativity", my ass. 99% of people aren't hired to be creative. They're hired to be quick and efficient. After over three years WFH now, I know that my performance has improved. Anyone asking me to move around town every day will simply have to pay for that additional task now.
  - kaashif 2y ago
    Indeed, I think VCs and founders are (predictably) focused on the cases where creativity and learning are important. I think I have a job like that where we're building a new product, and very often we have ideas or realise issues that I don't think we would if we didn't have in person communication. But there are a lot of jobs where your won't get rewarded for that and where in person interactions don't actually produce that much value.
- jakupovic 2y ago
  Bunch of bs and conjectures strung into a fluff piece. There is no way to construct best teams while concentrated into 1 physical place. It's impossible, especially when looking to build a distributed team on 24hrs. You can get a few people to work together but for full 24/7 coverage wfh distribution is best. Easier to hire and replace workers, consequently.
- anonzzzies 2y ago
  So far all responses to articles about to wfh or not wfh have been far more nuanced; it’s good for some, not good for others to wfh. Some people love the office and do their best work to waste half a day or more of the day commuting and talking about the weather in ‘meetings’ while others (and I guess you feel in what camp I am) get far more done at home. Forcing everyone into offices is only about control and bad managers not being sure how to show their job is actually worth anything at all. Hint; it very often isn’t. Their jobs can often be replaced by a trivial piece of saas software. > Like many HNers Show of hands please as I don’t know if this is the case; I haven’t seen it. Like said; it’s mostly more nuanced and almost no one here I have seen claiming that ‘everyone RTO’ is a good plan, at all.
mttpgn 2y ago
What has played out with RTO is a prisoner's dilemma scenario with astoundingly low defection rates. Return to office is a prisoner's dilemma for executives where "defection" means permitting WFH and "cooperation" means enforcing return to office. If a company dictates that their employees return to the physical office but their competitors do not, there is a likelihood of losing valuable talent to companies with remote-friendly working conditions. If both the company and all their competitors allow work-from-home to continue, then all of them, as industry decision-makers, must adjust policies, expectations, and operations to reflect this shift. While this scenario does not lead to a talent exodus, it does entail some other costs. Potential costs to this mutual “defection,” the acceptance of a “new office normal,” could include investors pointing out the wasteful operational expense of unused office space. Additionally, investor pressure from commercial real estate interests may also oppose such leadership decisions. If the company “cooperates,” such that they insist on RTO while all of their competitors simultaneously insist that their employees need to work in-the-office, then no one has to adjust company policies to operate in a remote company environment. The effect of this will be employees open to recruitment finding their choices for alternative, more accommodating employers scarce and in low supply. In this multi-player, game-theoretic landscape, where CEOs want to avoid the costs (real or potential) of allowing their people the ability to work remotely, cooperating companies need as few “defector” companies in their industrial sector as possible. With their other choices few and far-between, employees seeking the freedom to continue working from home will eventually give up on their WFH-oriented job hunts and decide to stay on in their current positions.
- galdosdi 2y ago
  > "a prisoner's dilemma scenario with astoundingly low defection rates" That could be the official slogan of any successful ruling class.
- dheera 2y ago
  > there is a likelihood of losing valuable talent to companies with remote-friendly working conditions. They ARE losing talent to remote-friendly companies, actually. It's just that retaining talent isn't their priority. They overhired and don't want a PR issue so they'd rather make it as miserable as possible so that some people leave on their own.
aspanu 2y ago
I find this type of argument about RTO to be pretty poor. I think it’s pretty lazy to crank out a vibes based article describing specific grievances and generalizing to an entire population. I think the real discussion about RTO, pro or con, is a lot more nuanced, and this type of argument does a disservice to the complexities. In my experience, a lot of the compelling arguments I’ve heard are actually complaints about poor North American city design, rather than necessarily anti-being in a reasonable office.
- infotainment 2y ago
  Completely agree; I think an argument can be made that there are a lot of benefits to in-person interaction. Most anti-RTO arguments I’ve seen boil down to “I don’t like my commute” which has less to do with RTO and more to do with America’s lack of meaningful transportation infrastructure.
  - janosdebugs 2y ago
    I believe, most of the companies that we hear instituting an RTO mandate have distributed teams, so that in-person interaction wouldn't manifest in these cases. Also, I live in a country with very meaningful transportation infrastructure, I still wouldn't want to spend 1.5-2 hours every day crammed into said infrastructure at rush hour for no good reason. Buying a car would have saved me 30 minutes tops and I find it irresponsible when public transport is available. Thankfully, I no longer work for a company that mandates in-office work and even the telco (!) I used to work for had unlimited home office even before the pandemic, which worked beautifully and saved them lots of money. Having an office to go to helps the more socially inclined employees, but doesn't boost productivity uniformly, especially when everyone is on calls all day anyway. Just like home office, full in-office work needs a very special setup to be truly effective and given global hiring, may be harder to achieve that a remote culture.
    - infotainment 2y ago
      > I believe, most of the companies that we hear instituting an RTO mandate have distributed teams, so that in-person interaction wouldn't manifest in these cases. I agree that RTO makes no sense if you’re going to spend your entire day in calls. That said, I would actually go a bit further, and argue that distributed teams themselves are a bad idea for that reason.
Almondsetat 2y ago
If you work in a cubicle farm you are not making the big bucks, meaning that your house is probably not that big and comfortable. I prefer going to the office because there I have a big desk with multiple monitors and a powerful desktop computer, a set up that I really can't afford at home without sacrificing precious space. Sure, if you work at Google you can a afford a nice big home with a dedicated WFH space and you might rightly feel that going back to the office is a downgrade, but that's not for everyone.
- hkxer 2y ago
  Not true. I work at FAANG and my colleagues making 400k work in a “cubicle farm” and also cannot afford a nice house bc we are in an HCOL area.
- ctrw 2y ago
  Get a load of this boomer thinking you still have the luxury of a cubicle. Open offices are the norm in tech regardless of salary.
  - patch_cable 2y ago
    I was going to say…I would absolutely love a cubicle.
  - galdosdi 2y ago
    GOD I KNOW RIGHT. Elder millenial here, I got the luxury of a cubicle ONCE, briefly at the start of my career.... never again. Never understood Dilbert poking fun of cubicles so much till I realized what they replaced was widespread private offices! For most or all engineering staff, not just the executives! What really confuses me is -- isn't corporate america in 2025 way way way way more profitable than in 1980? So why can't we afford private offices or even cubicles anymore?
    - mijowi 2y ago
      Maybe it’s way way way way more profitable because they got rid of cubicles
planet_1649c 2y ago
Looks like i’m in one of those minorities who like going to office. My major point is those spontaneous interactions that i have with my colleagues that gives me a lot of ideas. With work from home all those are gone. Hate commuting to office. An ideal world would be walk to office and have a hybrid model like 2-3 days in office for me.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 2y ago
  I have a 30 minute bike ride to the office and go 3 days per week. For me it's perfect. I would go mad working from home all week.
- lucumo 2y ago
  I like it too. It's nice to have separate work and home spheres, where the one doesn't distract from the other. I find commuting both annoying and nice. It allows me to clear my head and switch over to the other mindset.
- jochem9 2y ago
  I have the same and I don't think we're a (small) minority, at least not in the company where I work. Almost everyone on my team comes in 2 or 3 times a week. We have some meetings, great (free) lunch, work together on some things, crack lots of jokes and get to informally chat about things you don't easily schedule a call for (how you're doing, how you feel things are going in the team, in the company, in life in general - the under current that doesn't get visible easily). It of course helps that my commute is 25 minutes and that our office space is only for our team. There is a natural ebb and flow to when people get loud and active, and when we're burried in our screens cracking a problem, so you also get to be productive. I do work from home as well. I really like that I have the freedom to balance wfh and wfo.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Even though I could WFH most days, I go to the office whenever I can. The point is exactly in being away from home and its distractions. It's much easier to concentrate when in an office. I worked from home for years, on and off, so I can definitely compare.
- 2y ago
questinthrow 2y ago
Mistake or not, life is all about leverage. And the balance of power has swung back from employee to employer now that we're done with the covid bubble. Managers must tame their unruly cattle and punish them for their past transgressions when the cattle briefly had a moment of increased leverage. The sad part is that other industries are even worse about this, I know people in the medical system that have to buy gifts for people higher in the hierarchy in order to advance. So we're still kind of blessed for now, well until AI removes all our leverage at least.
- steve1977 2y ago
  > until AI removes all our leverage at least. Oh we still have the leverage of being a big mass then. AI won't beat physical violence in case of a revolution.
  - questinthrow 2y ago
    Violence can also be automated though, we'll see how we fare against autonomous police and drones
    - steve1977 2y ago
      Who will build the drones? Who will provide the raw materials?
      - silverquiet 2y ago
        People with kids to feed, house and provide health insurance for I presume.
      - questinthrow 2y ago
        There's a lot of people without scruples around. Humanity on average doesnt really bother with ethics that much.
  - rl3 2y ago
    >AI won’t beat physical violence in case of a revolution. On a long enough time scale it beats everything.
CobrastanJorji 2y ago
There sure seem like a lot of data-driven companies out there that really want to just go with their gut feelings about whether or not returning to the office is a good idea.
batrat 2y ago
WFH is not for everyone. With kids around, no matter where I isolate myself in the house it's impossible to do it. Leaving home, going to work, interacting with coworkers, telling jokes, eating at the same table, I realized 90% of the problems are solved at cigarette brake, brunch, launch, etc. Meetings are the only thing I would WFH... god burn them with fire.
sublinear 2y ago
This is a thoroughly beaten horse. The conditions for successful work from home are: hire well experienced back office employees, have relaxed yet firm deadlines, conduct daily meetings, keep your middle management busy with more important work than helicoptering over their team, use your office space for more than just a place to sit, etc. Businesses with multiple offices have been doing "remote" work for decades. This is more about company scale than policy. Too small or too large and you'll struggle keeping people organized. Mid-sized businesses are the majority and few have required returning to the office.
pompino 2y ago
People are not identical and you can't apply the same policy for a labor force of 3 billion. If you think your policy is so right, stop calling people names who disagree with you. Go run your company as you think is right. If your employees are happy, you're doing something right, ignore the stupid people on the internet.
junto 2y ago
There’s an elephant in the room here. The pandemic pushed WFH over the Rubicon. Now the only way to put that genie back in the bottle is when the majority of companies force RTO. When the they don’t, RTO companies are deliberately and knowingly sabotaging their own companies by paying higher salaries and relocation for talent that is not geographically local. Remote companies are competing on a completely different playing field now they have reached that mass effect. So RTO company CEO’s should now be deeply questioned on their policies by shareholders since it is deliberately damaging to their companies to forcibly restrict talent and to pay more for it.
okamiueru 2y ago
When I don't intend to do any actual work, I go to the office. Socialising is nice, and in part important. Some discussions are only had in that setting. When I want to do actual work, I stay at home. If I couldn't decide how to best do my job, I'd have a chat with my manager, and change jobs if we couldn't agree on something so basic.
kkfx 2y ago
Just from my last very few days feeds: - https://nypost.com/2024/03/19/us-news/less-than-one-in-three-yorkers-planning-to-flee-city-and-just-30-are-happy-with-quality-of-life-survey/ https://nypost.com/2024/03/19/us-news/less-than-one-in-three... - https://mishtalk.com/economics/half-of-downtown-pittsburgh-office-space-could-be-empty-in-4-years/ https://mishtalk.com/economics/half-of-downtown-pittsburgh-o... - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-20/baltimore-wants-to-sell-hundreds-of-vacant-homes-for-1-each https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-20/baltimore... and https://buyintobmore.baltimorecity.gov/ https://buyintobmore.baltimorecity.gov/ Well... It's clear that the modern city, the modern Fordlandia, today named Telosa, Prospera, Arkadag, Innopolis, ... is just a farm of humans that works just to pay services they can't live without, ending up in owning nothing and NOT being happy except happy in the Canon idea of happiness: https://petapixel.com/2021/06/17/canon-uses-ai-cameras-that-only-let-smiling-workers-inside-offices/ https://petapixel.com/2021/06/17/canon-uses-ai-cameras-that-... RTO policies are because of that. If we start en masse to realize that we can live in homes, spread enough to have the ideal density for today sane economy of scale, modern surveillance capitalism, modern "sharing economy" fails. The biggest that have craft them and profit on them will fail. A new economy will emerge and they can't switch quick enough. Money in the modern world are extractors of value from the 99%, given it to a small cleptocracy, this cleptocracy need humans like Ford model workers in Fordlandia. People who live to work in a factory they do not own, in a hierarchy not a democracy, trapped by economic genital lace, conformism, habits. That's why most try to push RTO and SOME "slaves" help them fearing the change, unable to realize that changes happen anyway and try avoiding them means suffer them letting others decide and direct the change.
gorbachev 2y ago
Every article I read about this topic, whether advocating for RTO or against it, is black and white. The policy, whichever way the article prefers, is good or bad. No in between. If your job is highly collaborative, being in one place is so much better. Videoconferencing sucks, if your work requires collaborating with teams that do not share the same context as yours. If your job requires long periods of sustained focus, working from home is better. What I do agree with is that most companies and their leaders have no f*cking idea about how to think about remote or in-office work properly. They got with their own personal preferences, anecdotal evidence and authorative bullshit (if I don't see you working, I don't think you're working).
sys_64738 2y ago
My company senior management said they're doing an RTO three days a week as other big companies are doing it. It feels like a version of brinkmanship between employers and employees to see who blinks first. I work for this company because I am remote. I wouldn't work for them if I wasn't. These employers are either don't grasp that, don't want to, or are happy for the attritution.
lily4151 2y ago
[flagged]

82 points by ankitdce 2y ago

Related: Show HN: Return To Office Mandates suck https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39745254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39745254

fbdab103 2y ago

Are there any F500 companies remaining which have not had a RTO push? Not only has my company been increasingly pressuring RTO, they are getting rid of offices and even cubicles. You can now hotel in an open office hellscape. Return to office and double down on miserable working conditions. It feels like the execs just want to reinforce who is in charge.

matt3210 2y ago
Excessive open office plans are an overreaction to WFH lack of “spontaneous interaction”. I’d get more done if I had a door at work
Izikiel43 2y ago
Msft so far doesn’t have an rto policy company wide, it’s manager dependent.
wetpaws 2y ago
[dead]

dijit 2y ago

Lets be honest here, a very significant portion of business practices are caused because upper management do not trust the team they hired. Be it that they don't trust them to have the right idea, or trust them to do the work. Nearly all business practises we hate are caused by a measure of overt control over your daily time and a strict measuring of your time and tasks. Unfortunately: there's about 10-20% of people who genuinely shouldn't be working because they are untrustworthy, and things like remote work just enabled them to take multiple jobs or slack-off massively. So these practices mostly exist to deal with those people and the rest of us just suffer.

throwitaway222 2y ago
Actually it's a complicated effect. One person doing it often causes many people to do it. And its one of those things that doesn't replicate in an "in office" atmosphere.
yakaccount4 2y ago
I think there's a large pool of good talent that can't fully be trusted to do the right thing (not slack off), but can be employed successfully with sufficient guardrails (return to office). Loosely related anecdote why I feel so: For a while right after Apple started its mandatory RTO and ramped up Caffe Macs, the soda "grab n go" sections had an honor system - you paid your $1.25 for a coke and went on your way. Apparently there was a _lot_ of petty theft of drinks, so they have a person with an iPad check you off now, and I assume theft has basically plummeted since there's far less employees brazen enough to just barge off with one without checking off their name. So maybe the RTO is effective in someway? Or maybe the real lesson is that the soda should have been free to begin with.
- galdosdi 2y ago
  You have to.... pay... for soda... at Apple? What the hell?
  - azinman2 2y ago
    You have to pay for food and drink. It’s not like Google etc.
  - IntelMiner 2y ago
    Call it the Apple tax
  - teaearlgraycold 2y ago
    Same at Nvidia. But it's subsidized. The argument I heard is it reduces food waste.
  - samplatt 2y ago

KerrAvon 2y ago

Even Apple’s execs are willfully blind on this. Utterly baffling. There’s plenty of room at Apple Park for everyone to have a door that closes, but they insist on doubling people up in offices or open-plan labs. The entire executive class across the industry is broken.

bee_rider 2y ago

If developers are more productive at home, how are businesses that rent big expensive buildings for no benefit (or negative value) not being wiped out in the market? I don’t want RTO either but this seems suspicious.

janosdebugs 2y ago
The companies mandating RTO seem to be in the few thousand employees and up range. My experience is that at those sizes a developer spends most of their time figuring out what and how to code, which is mostly done in meetings. Writing code in such a setup is a relatively small part of the work. Developer effectiveness doesn't have that large of an impact on their success, whereas organizational skills and leadership do.
0x5f3759df-i 2y ago
Because developer productivity doesn't matter that much to big companies regardless of what they say. Their margins are high, and it's why google can have an entire team making sure their AI can't generate images of white people and still rake in more cash than god from their search monopoly.
timwaagh 2y ago
Because a lot of tech companies are monopolies and do not have to compete. They can do what they want.
sham1 2y ago
Markets don't work rationally and the demand for RTO isn't from developers. Also, non-IT stuff can also keep office rental businesses up and running.

1letterunixname 2y ago

RTO is all about control. It's an FU to your expenses, your time, your family, and your mental health.

bmitc 2y ago
I'll admit that I kind of like being in the office. However, I absolutely loathe commuting. There's honestly not a good solution. The best solutions are all overly optimistic. The ideal would be that all the employees lived 5-10 minutes away.
- Simulacra 2y ago
  I like the hybrid model. Two out of five days I need to be in the office, but I can pick and choose the days.
  - dheera 2y ago
    I prefer hybrid models don't dictate constraints like that and just set percentages that you should hit over time. I'm in a long distance relationship and I'm okay with going into the office 4-5 days a week for 6 out of 8 weeks as long as I can be full remote for 2 out of 8 weeks. But I am NOT okay with 2 days every week.
aspanu 2y ago
I personally have really not had this experience - especially given that a lot of companies in tech seem to have landed on either remote or hybrid (3 days in two days optional). I also think that this is fundamentally a city design issue (expenses, time, mental health), rather than a work issue.

system7rocks 2y ago

Correct. I am not in the software industry, but I love developers who have Sundays off and can come hang out with me.

Freedom2 2y ago

I disagree. Like many HNers, I align with Paul Graham's thoughts on the matter [1]. [1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/paul-graham-says-remote-does-225728000.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/paul-graham-says-remote-does-...

choeger 2y ago
"creativity", my ass. 99% of people aren't hired to be creative. They're hired to be quick and efficient. After over three years WFH now, I know that my performance has improved. Anyone asking me to move around town every day will simply have to pay for that additional task now.
- kaashif 2y ago
  Indeed, I think VCs and founders are (predictably) focused on the cases where creativity and learning are important. I think I have a job like that where we're building a new product, and very often we have ideas or realise issues that I don't think we would if we didn't have in person communication. But there are a lot of jobs where your won't get rewarded for that and where in person interactions don't actually produce that much value.
jakupovic 2y ago
Bunch of bs and conjectures strung into a fluff piece. There is no way to construct best teams while concentrated into 1 physical place. It's impossible, especially when looking to build a distributed team on 24hrs. You can get a few people to work together but for full 24/7 coverage wfh distribution is best. Easier to hire and replace workers, consequently.
anonzzzies 2y ago
So far all responses to articles about to wfh or not wfh have been far more nuanced; it’s good for some, not good for others to wfh. Some people love the office and do their best work to waste half a day or more of the day commuting and talking about the weather in ‘meetings’ while others (and I guess you feel in what camp I am) get far more done at home. Forcing everyone into offices is only about control and bad managers not being sure how to show their job is actually worth anything at all. Hint; it very often isn’t. Their jobs can often be replaced by a trivial piece of saas software. > Like many HNers Show of hands please as I don’t know if this is the case; I haven’t seen it. Like said; it’s mostly more nuanced and almost no one here I have seen claiming that ‘everyone RTO’ is a good plan, at all.

mttpgn 2y ago

What has played out with RTO is a prisoner's dilemma scenario with astoundingly low defection rates. Return to office is a prisoner's dilemma for executives where "defection" means permitting WFH and "cooperation" means enforcing return to office. If a company dictates that their employees return to the physical office but their competitors do not, there is a likelihood of losing valuable talent to companies with remote-friendly working conditions. If both the company and all their competitors allow work-from-home to continue, then all of them, as industry decision-makers, must adjust policies, expectations, and operations to reflect this shift. While this scenario does not lead to a talent exodus, it does entail some other costs. Potential costs to this mutual “defection,” the acceptance of a “new office normal,” could include investors pointing out the wasteful operational expense of unused office space. Additionally, investor pressure from commercial real estate interests may also oppose such leadership decisions. If the company “cooperates,” such that they insist on RTO while all of their competitors simultaneously insist that their employees need to work in-the-office, then no one has to adjust company policies to operate in a remote company environment. The effect of this will be employees open to recruitment finding their choices for alternative, more accommodating employers scarce and in low supply. In this multi-player, game-theoretic landscape, where CEOs want to avoid the costs (real or potential) of allowing their people the ability to work remotely, cooperating companies need as few “defector” companies in their industrial sector as possible. With their other choices few and far-between, employees seeking the freedom to continue working from home will eventually give up on their WFH-oriented job hunts and decide to stay on in their current positions.

galdosdi 2y ago
> "a prisoner's dilemma scenario with astoundingly low defection rates" That could be the official slogan of any successful ruling class.
dheera 2y ago
> there is a likelihood of losing valuable talent to companies with remote-friendly working conditions. They ARE losing talent to remote-friendly companies, actually. It's just that retaining talent isn't their priority. They overhired and don't want a PR issue so they'd rather make it as miserable as possible so that some people leave on their own.

aspanu 2y ago

I find this type of argument about RTO to be pretty poor. I think it’s pretty lazy to crank out a vibes based article describing specific grievances and generalizing to an entire population. I think the real discussion about RTO, pro or con, is a lot more nuanced, and this type of argument does a disservice to the complexities. In my experience, a lot of the compelling arguments I’ve heard are actually complaints about poor North American city design, rather than necessarily anti-being in a reasonable office.

infotainment 2y ago
Completely agree; I think an argument can be made that there are a lot of benefits to in-person interaction. Most anti-RTO arguments I’ve seen boil down to “I don’t like my commute” which has less to do with RTO and more to do with America’s lack of meaningful transportation infrastructure.
- janosdebugs 2y ago
  I believe, most of the companies that we hear instituting an RTO mandate have distributed teams, so that in-person interaction wouldn't manifest in these cases. Also, I live in a country with very meaningful transportation infrastructure, I still wouldn't want to spend 1.5-2 hours every day crammed into said infrastructure at rush hour for no good reason. Buying a car would have saved me 30 minutes tops and I find it irresponsible when public transport is available. Thankfully, I no longer work for a company that mandates in-office work and even the telco (!) I used to work for had unlimited home office even before the pandemic, which worked beautifully and saved them lots of money. Having an office to go to helps the more socially inclined employees, but doesn't boost productivity uniformly, especially when everyone is on calls all day anyway. Just like home office, full in-office work needs a very special setup to be truly effective and given global hiring, may be harder to achieve that a remote culture.
  - infotainment 2y ago
    > I believe, most of the companies that we hear instituting an RTO mandate have distributed teams, so that in-person interaction wouldn't manifest in these cases. I agree that RTO makes no sense if you’re going to spend your entire day in calls. That said, I would actually go a bit further, and argue that distributed teams themselves are a bad idea for that reason.

Almondsetat 2y ago

If you work in a cubicle farm you are not making the big bucks, meaning that your house is probably not that big and comfortable. I prefer going to the office because there I have a big desk with multiple monitors and a powerful desktop computer, a set up that I really can't afford at home without sacrificing precious space. Sure, if you work at Google you can a afford a nice big home with a dedicated WFH space and you might rightly feel that going back to the office is a downgrade, but that's not for everyone.

hkxer 2y ago
Not true. I work at FAANG and my colleagues making 400k work in a “cubicle farm” and also cannot afford a nice house bc we are in an HCOL area.
ctrw 2y ago
Get a load of this boomer thinking you still have the luxury of a cubicle. Open offices are the norm in tech regardless of salary.
- patch_cable 2y ago
  I was going to say…I would absolutely love a cubicle.
- galdosdi 2y ago
  GOD I KNOW RIGHT. Elder millenial here, I got the luxury of a cubicle ONCE, briefly at the start of my career.... never again. Never understood Dilbert poking fun of cubicles so much till I realized what they replaced was widespread private offices! For most or all engineering staff, not just the executives! What really confuses me is -- isn't corporate america in 2025 way way way way more profitable than in 1980? So why can't we afford private offices or even cubicles anymore?
  - mijowi 2y ago
    Maybe it’s way way way way more profitable because they got rid of cubicles

planet_1649c 2y ago

Looks like i’m in one of those minorities who like going to office. My major point is those spontaneous interactions that i have with my colleagues that gives me a lot of ideas. With work from home all those are gone. Hate commuting to office. An ideal world would be walk to office and have a hybrid model like 2-3 days in office for me.

tuwtuwtuwtuw 2y ago
I have a 30 minute bike ride to the office and go 3 days per week. For me it's perfect. I would go mad working from home all week.
lucumo 2y ago
I like it too. It's nice to have separate work and home spheres, where the one doesn't distract from the other. I find commuting both annoying and nice. It allows me to clear my head and switch over to the other mindset.
jochem9 2y ago
I have the same and I don't think we're a (small) minority, at least not in the company where I work. Almost everyone on my team comes in 2 or 3 times a week. We have some meetings, great (free) lunch, work together on some things, crack lots of jokes and get to informally chat about things you don't easily schedule a call for (how you're doing, how you feel things are going in the team, in the company, in life in general - the under current that doesn't get visible easily). It of course helps that my commute is 25 minutes and that our office space is only for our team. There is a natural ebb and flow to when people get loud and active, and when we're burried in our screens cracking a problem, so you also get to be productive. I do work from home as well. I really like that I have the freedom to balance wfh and wfo.
nine_k 2y ago
Even though I could WFH most days, I go to the office whenever I can. The point is exactly in being away from home and its distractions. It's much easier to concentrate when in an office. I worked from home for years, on and off, so I can definitely compare.
2y ago

questinthrow 2y ago

Mistake or not, life is all about leverage. And the balance of power has swung back from employee to employer now that we're done with the covid bubble. Managers must tame their unruly cattle and punish them for their past transgressions when the cattle briefly had a moment of increased leverage. The sad part is that other industries are even worse about this, I know people in the medical system that have to buy gifts for people higher in the hierarchy in order to advance. So we're still kind of blessed for now, well until AI removes all our leverage at least.

steve1977 2y ago
> until AI removes all our leverage at least. Oh we still have the leverage of being a big mass then. AI won't beat physical violence in case of a revolution.
- questinthrow 2y ago
  Violence can also be automated though, we'll see how we fare against autonomous police and drones
  - steve1977 2y ago
    Who will build the drones? Who will provide the raw materials?
    - silverquiet 2y ago
      People with kids to feed, house and provide health insurance for I presume.
    - questinthrow 2y ago
      There's a lot of people without scruples around. Humanity on average doesnt really bother with ethics that much.
- rl3 2y ago
  >AI won’t beat physical violence in case of a revolution. On a long enough time scale it beats everything.

CobrastanJorji 2y ago

There sure seem like a lot of data-driven companies out there that really want to just go with their gut feelings about whether or not returning to the office is a good idea.

batrat 2y ago

WFH is not for everyone. With kids around, no matter where I isolate myself in the house it's impossible to do it. Leaving home, going to work, interacting with coworkers, telling jokes, eating at the same table, I realized 90% of the problems are solved at cigarette brake, brunch, launch, etc. Meetings are the only thing I would WFH... god burn them with fire.

sublinear 2y ago

This is a thoroughly beaten horse. The conditions for successful work from home are: hire well experienced back office employees, have relaxed yet firm deadlines, conduct daily meetings, keep your middle management busy with more important work than helicoptering over their team, use your office space for more than just a place to sit, etc. Businesses with multiple offices have been doing "remote" work for decades. This is more about company scale than policy. Too small or too large and you'll struggle keeping people organized. Mid-sized businesses are the majority and few have required returning to the office.

pompino 2y ago

People are not identical and you can't apply the same policy for a labor force of 3 billion. If you think your policy is so right, stop calling people names who disagree with you. Go run your company as you think is right. If your employees are happy, you're doing something right, ignore the stupid people on the internet.

junto 2y ago

There’s an elephant in the room here. The pandemic pushed WFH over the Rubicon. Now the only way to put that genie back in the bottle is when the majority of companies force RTO. When the they don’t, RTO companies are deliberately and knowingly sabotaging their own companies by paying higher salaries and relocation for talent that is not geographically local. Remote companies are competing on a completely different playing field now they have reached that mass effect. So RTO company CEO’s should now be deeply questioned on their policies by shareholders since it is deliberately damaging to their companies to forcibly restrict talent and to pay more for it.

okamiueru 2y ago

When I don't intend to do any actual work, I go to the office. Socialising is nice, and in part important. Some discussions are only had in that setting. When I want to do actual work, I stay at home. If I couldn't decide how to best do my job, I'd have a chat with my manager, and change jobs if we couldn't agree on something so basic.

kkfx 2y ago

Just from my last very few days feeds: - https://nypost.com/2024/03/19/us-news/less-than-one-in-three-yorkers-planning-to-flee-city-and-just-30-are-happy-with-quality-of-life-survey/ https://nypost.com/2024/03/19/us-news/less-than-one-in-three... - https://mishtalk.com/economics/half-of-downtown-pittsburgh-office-space-could-be-empty-in-4-years/ https://mishtalk.com/economics/half-of-downtown-pittsburgh-o... - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-20/baltimore-wants-to-sell-hundreds-of-vacant-homes-for-1-each https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-20/baltimore... and https://buyintobmore.baltimorecity.gov/ https://buyintobmore.baltimorecity.gov/ Well... It's clear that the modern city, the modern Fordlandia, today named Telosa, Prospera, Arkadag, Innopolis, ... is just a farm of humans that works just to pay services they can't live without, ending up in owning nothing and NOT being happy except happy in the Canon idea of happiness: https://petapixel.com/2021/06/17/canon-uses-ai-cameras-that-only-let-smiling-workers-inside-offices/ https://petapixel.com/2021/06/17/canon-uses-ai-cameras-that-... RTO policies are because of that. If we start en masse to realize that we can live in homes, spread enough to have the ideal density for today sane economy of scale, modern surveillance capitalism, modern "sharing economy" fails. The biggest that have craft them and profit on them will fail. A new economy will emerge and they can't switch quick enough. Money in the modern world are extractors of value from the 99%, given it to a small cleptocracy, this cleptocracy need humans like Ford model workers in Fordlandia. People who live to work in a factory they do not own, in a hierarchy not a democracy, trapped by economic genital lace, conformism, habits. That's why most try to push RTO and SOME "slaves" help them fearing the change, unable to realize that changes happen anyway and try avoiding them means suffer them letting others decide and direct the change.

gorbachev 2y ago

Every article I read about this topic, whether advocating for RTO or against it, is black and white. The policy, whichever way the article prefers, is good or bad. No in between. If your job is highly collaborative, being in one place is so much better. Videoconferencing sucks, if your work requires collaborating with teams that do not share the same context as yours. If your job requires long periods of sustained focus, working from home is better. What I do agree with is that most companies and their leaders have no f*cking idea about how to think about remote or in-office work properly. They got with their own personal preferences, anecdotal evidence and authorative bullshit (if I don't see you working, I don't think you're working).

sys_64738 2y ago

My company senior management said they're doing an RTO three days a week as other big companies are doing it. It feels like a version of brinkmanship between employers and employees to see who blinks first. I work for this company because I am remote. I wouldn't work for them if I wasn't. These employers are either don't grasp that, don't want to, or are happy for the attritution.

lily4151 2y ago

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