16 ms·
Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds
- mvkel 2y agoOf the -really- talented tech folks I know, the opposite happened.
- relyks 2y agoThey wanted to go back to working in an office setting?
- dietr1ch 2y agoThey were not ordered to go back to the office? They were ordered not to go back to the office?
- relyks 2y agoYeah, what he's saying contradicts what the article is suggesting. That's why I'm asking about it
- dietr1ch 2y ago(I was just highlighting how ambiguous "opposite" is there)
- kfarr 2y agoStudy did not find top talent joined when ordered to go back to the home
- vundercind 2y agoOrdered front to the office, top tech talent right instead. (It really is puzzling what exactly was intended by “opposite”)
- latency-guy2 2y agoI suppose being blatantly obtuse and extremely literal worked as an argument this time, pray it'll work again for you the next time you want to employ this argument.
- throwitaway222 2y agoDoes it matter if said top talent was just watching YT all day at home Their heyday was 2016-2019
- talldayo 2y agoIn terms of opportunity cost, the only person losing in that scenario is the employer.
- paranoidrobot 2y agoUnless, as some have suggested, it's a deliberate tactic to cheaply reduce headcount. (No need for severance/redundancy payouts if people self-select to leave).
- talldayo 2y agoIf your only remaining employees are desperate sycophants, they're probably not the sort of top talent that actually knows what they're worth. Maybe I'm wrong though.
- paranoidrobot 2y agoThe freedom to just up and move jobs isn't equally available for everyone. Anyone who doesn't have a permanent right to work (eg on some kind of visa) can find it hard to switch jobs. If you live in a place where Healthcare is tied to your employer, then that can cause problems, too, if you/a family member have some kind of chronic/ongoing medical issues. If your salary package has some kind of deferred portion, then that can also make switching difficult.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wumbo 2y agoThat’s the job. There a lot of downtime as a programmer.
- ram_rar 2y agohttps://archive.md/Ih8Oi https://archive.md/Ih8Oi
- tail_exchange 2y agoI'm not seeing this at my workplace. People are doing what they are told, and they are returning to the office. Maybe because losing a job is risky right now, given the current job market. edit: don't get me wrong, I don't want RTO. I'm just saying that I'm personally not seeing people quit over it.
- llamataboot 2y agoI don't know why this was downvoted - i would agree that by and large people are falling in line and daring to speak up less than I've ever seen in 10+ years...
- solumunus 2y agoI wonder how many of those are actively looking for jobs.
- Phiwise_ 2y agoProbably more than are going to end up finding one, unfortunately: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1hG1R https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1hG1R
- tail_exchange 2y agoThe fact that the y-axis of this graph starts at 60 instead of 0 makes it seem way worse than it actually is. We seem to be at ~70% the value pre-pandemic.
- Phiwise_ 2y agoWhat are you talking about? It's an index. The data starts proportional at 100%. Says so on the scale. Did you not read the page? 0 would imply there is no dev jobs anywhere in the country. The industry could go through the worst crash of all time and still get nowhere near that value. Saying it's not at zero contains no useful information. 70% of normal operations is pretty dire for switching jobs compared to ordinary expectations is the point I was obviously making.
- noufalibrahim 2y agoSince there are a lot of founders here, I'm curious about what your positions are whether you have any guides/references to creating a good environment. My own experience has been that with junior talent, they don't gel with the team and don't have anything in common with the rest of the employees outside of the project they're working on.
- carom 2y agoI have been a remote employee (starting years before the pandemic) at a number of companies. The biggest thing I've noticed is the importance of communication. More specifically, you need a chat-first workforce. Seeing some places that were awful at remote and some that were really good, it really comes down to how comfortable people were communicating via chat. If I were building a remote company I would hire people out of chats. I would rather hire someone off of IRC than off of LinkedIn, because I know the people on IRC can communicate (and argue!) via text. This may mean Discord now. That's my strongest opinion. Following that is managerial. I have had places that did not have 1:1s with your direct manager, just bi-weekly or daily 15 minute standups with everyone. That is a good way to sabotage your company. Employees have nowhere to air problems besides in front of the whole group, so problems don't get mentioned until they are breaking (e.g. I have been working on other stuff for 2 months waiting for this guy to deliver something, but I need it now). Being good enough to know what needs to be done, and being able to hire good talent and then trust them to get that stuff done. I have seen non-technical founders being run around by a D-tier CTO. You need good people to get good people as well. That place had a very difficult time landing talent. Finally, pay well. I think the standard early startup pay range (180k + 1%) will not get you the technical talent you need. Maybe I am overestimating the technical challenges many companies face, but I would not build a business off of $180k engineers. I would rather pay double that (while being selective about talent) and get something (better) built with fewer people.
- ProxCoques 2y ago> you need a chat-first workforce I second this. Worked for a large retail operation and people used to sometimes move between departments. These had very different communication styles: one group had communal rolling chats about all sorts of stuff all the time. Others only chatted if they had planned to do so, or created a specific private chat for a topic. Far easier to work in the department in which you could just fling out a question or comment any time and people would get back to you almost instantly and hash things out.
- tucnak 2y agoGenuine "top talent" is the people that care about the company; they aren't leaving.
- greenthrow 2y agoYeah, no. The only people who care about the company are the execs who own enough stock to care and green newbies who haven't been burned yet by companies who do not care about them at all.
- tucnak 2y agoSo cynical! I'm trembling.
- greenthrow 2y agoDon't be childish. It's just the truth.
- tucnak 2y agoI think we should take the time to get in touch with your employer, and let them know that you DON'T GIVE A FUCK, & some more about how "caring" is for <s>pussies</s>, or should I say greens/grifting executives.
- greenthrow 2y ago[flagged]
- tucnak 2y ago[flagged]
- greenthrow 2y agoYou realize lame responses like this are functionally an admission that your point was baseless right? When you resort to silly responses like "I'm trembling", anyone with half a brain reading that knows you have no rational response so you're falling back on playground taunting.
- nomilk 2y agoAlso interesting (from the abstract of the study itself [1]): > These shifts appear to be driven by employees leaving to larger firms that are direct competitors. [1] https://harris.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/wright-return-to-office.pdf https://harris.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/wright-retur...
- dmitrygr 2y agoWell, yeah... I am at my current job due to my previous one demanding RTO. As soon as they started taking attendance in the office, I walked out. I know a number of others who did the same, at a number of companies. Then the layoffs started and this paused as people were scared. Now that hiring is picking up again and many feel that the worst is behind us, multiple people from former workplaces that are in full-on RTO mode have already reached out asking how things are at my current workplace and whether we are hiring for remote roles (we are).
- dmichulke 2y agoCorollary: If you didn't leave when ordered back to the office, you're not top tech talent.
- Afforess 2y agoBetter Corollary: If you worked somewhere that made remote permanent you made the right career decision.
- pessimizer 2y agoYou might even say that they were trying to lay off an overaccumulation of senior "talent" without having to pay them off. RTW is probably mostly covert layoffs; you won't see these people replaced, and in a year or two these companies will have significant numbers of employees working from home again.
- jaydeegee 2y agoSpend 10+ hours and extra expenses commuting, you want to retain valuable staff you have to make that a good value proposition for them.
- ProxCoques 2y agoA lot of offices in London closed their gyms over the pandemic and never brought them back. I always thought that was pretty stupid. A lot of people who could WFH even before then used to come in for the free gym at least.
- zx8080 2y agoWhy don't they buy gym pass themselves? Or is it too expensive in London?
- kdmytro 2y agoThey do, but they buy a pass to a gym that is closer to home, which does not help building relationships within the company.
- SauciestGNU 2y agoWhen I worked at a company with a gym, people would finesse their workout into their working day, so they weren't spending additional time in their day working out. That's the perk imo, the time savings and convenience, not saving on a gym membership.
- hiq 2y agoPart of the perk is also avoiding the question "is it worth it for me?". There's way less friction when something is free, even when compared with a somewhat negligible price.
- obnauticus 2y agoI think the companies cited in this article might be weird to compare. Apple is very RTO heavy because they’re an old school hardware company. Hardware work is easy to demand in office work because: (1) apple secrecy and prevention of leaks and (2) access to lab equipment. #2 likely holds true for spaceX as well. Adding Microsoft to the mix is weird as nobody I know there actually RTOs. I think people need to actually specifically measure which roles (senior? engineering?) in tech we are discussing RTO about here. I agree that for most software engineering it backfired. But if you’re an apple hardware engineer, there aren’t many places in town that’ll pay you as much so you’ll accept whatever horrible RTO hand you’re dealt. Companies apply these rules to everyone which is very, very stupid IMO. I think the most interesting part about this being on the inside is the rationale behind RTO. It’s always the same citing culture, collaboration, or other fuzzy things. It is never quantitative. Are you telling me that the people making these decisions are doing so without data? I think that’s unlikely, it’s just that the data isn’t in their favor and execs are smart enough than to let remote versus not remote become yet another bargaining chip for an employee, let alone senior ones. TLDR, I think senior vs not senior in tech is likely too much of a generalization. But the people with the actual data aren’t speaking up probably because discussing the results don’t benefit them.
- bravetraveler 2y agoDon't hesitate to look. There are offers out there. This was me until recently. I was at my limit of nonsense unrelated to the job... then unclear RTO policies started appearing. I put my foot out of the door and raised my concerns. Management then, in a panic, told me it's being used as a wedge. Platitudes like "Enforcement isn't likely" or "not worth thinking about". They were right... but not the way they intended. I chose new employment that doesn't play these games. The market has decided I'm worth an extra $70k/year (with 200k in RSUs) and can work remotely. I now make more money, am officially remote, and have less stress. By picking up a new job I've actually shed about seven. It's incredible how much burden one can carry. This isn't even some fancy dev role, just SRE/keeping lights on. I hope the good people I left behind (or those reading this) recognize the game. It's the cheapest way to lay people off, get them to leave. The nefarious thing is it costs you, too. Their attempts to retain were repulsing. I was assured that because of "who I am", I didn't need to worry. That validated the choice for me.
- ornornor 2y ago> It's the cheapest way to lay people off, get them to leave. The nefarious thing is it costs you, too. And best of all, the hidden costs don’t show on the balance sheet for many many quarters, hopefully after the CxO has left and it’s someone else’s problem. It really is a victimless crime!
- bravetraveler 2y agoIndeed, if at all! This is a company everyone knows but expects nothing from. It's institution at this point, barely makes anything. Not making a riddle, there aren't codes here. No, this also isn't a code. I'd outright say the company name if I wanted to communicate it I know people like to read into things... So have that last paragraph of madness. Spare the effort
- bravetraveler 2y agoI can't edit now, but a point I missed. Empty things like this serve as a function to identify workers who will allow themselves to be exploited. I was blind but now I see. That's what I'm really getting at with "validation". They determined I was fine for this game. What about the next?
- npteljes 2y agoI firmly believe that management doesn't, or shouldn't mind this. I think a successful company is not necessarily built on top talent, but rather on people whose behavior can be managed - and on managers that are similarly competent. Similar to how on a building site, extraordinary bricklayers are not necessary, only a specific kind of adequacy is. The other thing is that people who have something extraordinary also ask for something extraordinary in return, and that's not surprising either, it's just power dynamics. Similar to how powerful celebrities can have ridiculous backstage requests - what are they going to do, cancel a show?
- karma_pharmer 2y ago[flagged]
- npteljes 2y agoNot trolling, it's my genuine opinion, experience. For the spirit of curious discussion, what do you disagree with and why?
- karma_pharmer 2y ago[flagged]
- SauciestGNU 2y agoThis is an interesting perspective. I almost agree, in that many or most companies out there will be more or less fine with mid-tier talent. Not every company or product requires the best talent out there. But I still think there will be downstream effects to driving out strong performers, and time will be the judge there.
- npteljes 2y ago>many or most companies out there will be more or less fine with mid-tier talent. Indeed. As my years go by, I value reliability more than talent, possibilities, records. For example when playing games, I always leave a good buffer so that the card delivers the 60 fps in the most complex scenes too. I value that more than beautiful, but sometimes choppy performance.
- thegreatbeanz 2y agoDisclosure: In October 2021 after 10 years working at Apple I left to join Microsoft, so I’m not totally unbiased. I love the sentiment this article is expressing, and anecdotally the thesis holds in my experience: senior engineers have lots of opportunity, so they can (and will) leave if they disagree with office policies. That said, the article is not good journalism. Its own cited data doesn’t actually represent the conclusion it draws. SpaceX took an extremely draconian return-to-office policy and they suffered for it, but they also suffered for Musk being insane, so I’m not sure the causation is 100% there. Apple actually took the next most draconian policy (required 3 days in the office per week from every employee), and in fact Apple’s enforcement of the policy has been extremely draconian. An acquaintance of mine got in trouble for hopping on a plane to visit their dying parent and not filling out the HR form to use their allowed “two weeks per year” of remote working. One of my former departments at Apple has management checking badge in and out times to enforce the policy. That’s insane! Microsoft’s policy has been the most liberal of the three (which isn’t shown in the data). I left Apple in 2021 in the face of being forced back to the office for a fully-remote role at Microsoft on a team that transitioned from fully in the office in 2018 to fully dispersed in 2021. Articles like this (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/technology/microsoft-rto.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/technology/microsoft-rto....) don’t properly capture Microsoft’s official return to work policy. Microsoft effectively left decisions about returning to the office up to managers and teams, and the corporate leadership incentivized managers to be more liberal by allowing teams to grow more if they hired more remote workers. At one point my team was told that 50% of all new hires were required to be fully remote. The drama day of Microsoft’s policy taking effect which was cited in some articles was really a nothingburger. All you had to do was check the HR website to make sure it properly reflected if you were remote, in-office, or hybrid.
- ryandrake 2y ago> One of my former departments at Apple has management checking badge in and out times to enforce the policy. That’s insane! I keep in touch with a few of my co-workers who still work there, and they tell me there are a non-zero number of people still giving their badges to their RTO'ed buddies to "badge them in" on the right days. I'm sure that's strictly against multiple policies and they'll probably get caught at some point, but... people find a way.