Ask HN: Is remote going away? Why?

28 points by thisiswrongggg 3 years ago | 66 comments

I hear stories around me and it seems like the remote is ebbing atm.

More and more companies are cutting down on it increasing the needed presence. At the same time they just don't have the real estate capacity to do it decently which means (at least in my personal experience) that you land in a noisy subpar open space (worst invention ever) for n days a week where you can hardly do any work.

Not to mention wasting time/energy in commuting.

It really beats me why a company would waste resources like that and I cannot explain it. The best I have is that this is some kind of power play but I'm not convinced. Am I missing something?

codegeek 3 years ago |

Let me give you a different perspective than "employers want power" etc. Not everyone can work remotely. Remote 100% is not always the answer. If you are entry level and want to learn from your peers and seniors, nothing beats in person collaboration. Nothing. People can claim otherwise and it may be true for a small percentage of people but if you have less than 3 years of real professional experience, 100% remote is a bad idea.

The answer is hybrid (my opinion) and even though it may be true that employers have commercial real estate and all, but if productivity was really up, why would they care ? The truth is that there are many people who either are not a good fit for 100% remote (juniors) or use 100% remote to do things that they wouldn't be able to otherwise (overemployed, slacking off further) etc.

lmarcos 3 years ago | |

> People can claim otherwise and it may be true for a small percentage of people but if you have less than 3 years of real professional experience, 100% remote is a bad idea.

So, if I have 15 years of experience can I work from home? Hum. All the juniors in the office, all the seniors at home. That's it? Or just because some engineers do not know how to work remotely, then I too should be dragged to the office?

Nonsense.

flappyeagle 3 years ago | | |

> So, if I have 15 years of experience can I work from home? Hum. All the juniors in the office, all the seniors at home.

I don't know how open you are to an actual answer, but here goes: The short answer is yes, but here are nuances.

Things I've seen work

1. Fully remote companies with a high density of experienced talent and very few (sometimes none) juniors. Everyone is expected to be professional, responsible, know when they need help or get stuck, deliver production ready stuff in the first or second iteration. Juniors get at least 2 1:1s per week from their manager and a senior IC colleague. 2-4x a year, company has a conference/convention where everyone gathers in a single location.

2. Hybrid approach, with some fully remote hires, exclusively at senior level, with a focus on the high end. All juniors in office, with a mix of junior-senior employees. People can and do work remotely 2-3x a week. Regular events when everyone comes into the office.

Things that absolutely do not work

1. Fully remote team with a lot of junior people. They get isolated, don't get the mentorship they need, end up working inefficiently for too long getting stuck on basic things because they don't know when to ask questions, and they don't have enough dedicated mentorship to be supported.

2. Hybrid team with fully remote junior members. This is the worst case scenario. Those team members are doubly isolated, both by their physical distance and by the issues detailed in (1)

ineedausername 3 years ago | |

+1. Remote is not healthy for everyone either, and we should stop pretending otherwise.

throwaway675309 3 years ago | |

"People can claim otherwise and it may be true for a small percentage of people but if you have less than 3 years of real professional experience, 100% remote is a bad idea."

Why three years? What about 4 years? How about 2.5 years?

I'm sorry to call you out but it's incredibly frustrating than on a news aggregate site that purports to hold itself to a higher standard than alternatives like reddit, that users are still completely confident about putting forth assertions such as these with zero actual concrete quantifiable data other than anecdotal evidence.

Spooky23 3 years ago | | |

It’s a message board, not a PhD defense.

What’s the factual basis for your visceral reaction?

clnq 3 years ago |

In my opinion, remote work is here to stay in the long term. Many tech companies now jumping on the RTO trend may not yet fully comprehend the costs they will eventually incur. A number of their senior engineers are departing and finding high demand for their skills from remote companies. Not to mention that many are establishing their own startups, offering even greater flexibility in the workplace. In my sector of the industry (games), there are articles every week in the news about ex-leads building their own studios; can you guess why? What is more, anti-remote companies can't attract this talent with their headhunters anymore.

There will always be entry-level candidates willing to do whatever it takes to get a tech job and ambitious career makers gunning for those vacant leadership roles. But the costs of losing decades of institutional knowledge will catch up with these companies. They are harming themselves for an RTO whim and many won't make it in the long-term with his type of leadership.

WFH for engineers is a no-brainer however you look at it. Whether it's about quality of life, work and life balance, convenience, savings on office space and utilities, or being able to attract top talent. Why would I, as an engineer, apply for a job that will ask me to relocate, make my spouse quit their job to move with me, pull my kids out of school and make them find new friends elsewhere, abandon all my responsibilities to my community and put my house up for rent for a company when there are plenty more that don't ask me to do it? And most will still have a small office to come into if I so insist.

I don't think cunning malice or power plays can explain the decisions of leaders forcing RTO on their employees. There does not seem to be anything calculated about this to me. I reckon they just don't understand what happened to their business during the pandemic and they want to get back to the good old ways instead of finding the actual root causes of their problems. When the damage of RTO becomes clear, some will revert their decisions, and others will double down. Either they will go back to WFH or make space for others on the market. Doing work that can be done from home from the office is an unnatural state of things, it was only normal in very recent history, and hopefully briefly.

JohnFen 3 years ago |

It's a power play. Plus, companies have all this real estate that they need to justify.

I've listened closely to all of the pro-RTO people, and have yet to hear a single reason proposed that makes any sense at all. The only thing I'm left with that makes any sense is that this is about power and money.

make_it_sure 3 years ago | |

You don't want to hear other reasons. There are tons of people that now work on 2-3 companies at the same time -> productivity decreased. They do all other stuff around the house and they get caught up on it -> productivity decreased. Company culture doesn't make sense anymore and teams are less connected -> productivity decreased.

There are many other reasons, not just power like people here say just because they are highly biased.

crimsontech 3 years ago | | |

This hasn’t been my experience at all.

I’ve been remote for over 15yrs starting as a junior and becoming a senior with added management responsibilities. I’ve been mentored and have mentored remotely.

Remote can and does work, but the company needs to be set up or adjust for it properly. Remote and asynchronous communication needs to be the primary way to communicate for it to work IMO.

Here is a pre-pandemic post on Wordpress, which started as a remote first company: https://hbr.org/2013/03/how-wordpress-thrives-with-a-1

You mentioned troublesome employees, these also exist in the office but they also impact other employees. I’ve had many complaints over the years of disruptive staff in the office making it difficult for others to focus and get work done. I’ve only known one remote employee who clearly wasn’t spending his time working.

I need hours of uninterrupted time to get work done. This just doesn’t happen at the office.

I know it’s not for everyone, I’ve had staff leave because they need the social aspect of working in an office, but in general, in my line of work, people prefer to be remote.

JohnFen 3 years ago | | |

> You don't want to hear other reasons.

Untrue. I've listened, and continue to listen, with an open mind. However, I haven't found the arguments being put forth to be very persuasive. Being unconvinced is not the same as "not wanting to hear".

If an employee's productivity has become unacceptable, then you address it with that employee to correct the situation. If it can't be corrected, you fire them.

This is no different working from home than working in an office.

dougmwne 3 years ago |

Yes, you are thinking right, it’s all about power. I think it’s a few kind of power actually.

The biggest is the power balance between capital and labor. Capital wants cheap and pliant hands to do the work. That’s behind a lot of the fed interest rate raises and recession drumbeat in the media.

But another one, and a very important one is the power of one person over another. The best and most intimate and controlling kind of power is the power over another person’s body. Where they go, how long they stay there, how they behave. For a leader to really feel that power, they need eyes and sometimes hands on the people who work for them.

zainhoda 3 years ago |

I think the RTO is somewhat of a temporary condition. The big companies are telling workers to come back into the office and they’re complying because the job market has softened and people don’t want to lose their jobs.

Companies haven’t realized the detriment that RTO is having on their recruitment because most of the big names are doing layoffs rather than hiring.

It’s pretty evident that companies that are posting remote roles get orders of magnitude more applicants.

Once the economy picks up, the RTO companies are going to have to reassess as their applicant pools will be smaller than WFH companies.

gtirloni 3 years ago | |

RTO companies are already paying a lot more than the market. When this bounces back, I can only imagine the even higher premium they will need to pay to attract top performers.

It's the sunk cost fallacy in action. They spent too much on physical space and the whole organization that comes with that and can't let it go and cut their losses, so they are doubling down with RTO. I can't see this ending well in the long-term for them.

mikhael28 3 years ago |

Remote works for some people, for most it probably doesn't work. There is a reason why everyone doesn't have six pack abs - the same reason why people are, in general, more 'productive' when they have people in their immediate vicinity to hold them accountable.

Instead of having the possibility of playing videogames at home, while being online on Slack.

It's kinda common sense - humans have a limited amount of willpower they can expend daily, and it generally takes a lot of willpower to not slack off - especially if your job is boring as hell. Dev work isn't very boring, because it's kind of like art - but you better believe a lot of 'remote' work is mind-numbingly boring.

ipaddr 3 years ago | |

If I can't trust you to work on your own whether it is in the office or at home you are not someone I want to hire. Babysitting employees is a waste of resources.

mikhael28 3 years ago | | |

Agreed! For high functioning employees. Unfortunately, there is a reason that managers... exist. If everyone was capable of self management, well society would look a lot different.

flappyeagle 3 years ago | | |

I can't trust ME to stay on task when there are so many distractions at home.

mikhael28 3 years ago | |

Also, the reasons mentioned in this thread of execs trying to re-establish previous power hierarchies pre-COVID.

mikhael28 3 years ago | | |

I personally believe that people are more productive in person together, but there are some important caveats: a. the commute must be quick and pain free b. you must enjoy the people you work with c. you must have work that is inherently collaborative, or at least partially collaborative. If it's not fully collaborative, you should work remotely part of the time. d. perks, like an office gym, free lunch, are bonuses that the company can give to help you offset the time/expense of commutes. Free parking is a must.

If you don't have these things... the argument for working in person is low. You should either work somewhere else, or work remotely and save $$$ and time.

flappyeagle 3 years ago | | |

Why do you think execs have less power remotely?

keiferski 3 years ago |

Plenty of companies are remote-only and functionally have no way of ever becoming in-person. They tend to be smaller, not huge megacorps, though.

If working remotely is important to you, I would look for these types of companies, and not the ones that only adopted remote work because of external circumstances, whether that be cultural trends or lockdown restrictions.

amerkhalid 3 years ago |

There was meme going around about an executive complaining about why he was buying expensive suits when people see it only in low resolution on Zoom. That is probably a partial reason.

I work from home 100% but I sort of miss office and socializing there. It is easier to discuss a problem over cigarette break/lunch/happy hour than an ad hoc Zoom meeting. I have been working from home since 2017 but I had an office nearby. On days when I felt lonely, I could go to office. I would join company's social events, etc. I made some lifelong friends working from offices.

Yes most of these reasons are personal/social. Not for an increased business value. It is hard for me to see business value when working from an office other than social cohesion and politics.

If companies and employees care about the planet, they may provide better options to socialize over long distance like schedule a lunch hour everyday. Or subsidize working from local co-working places. Encourage and provide support for employees to join local social groups such as sports leagues, neighborhood groups, etc.

We used to have lunch breaks with my other friends who work from home but lately it seems most of them have to work from office few days a week or they just want to work through lunch and get done with work early. I think companies should be encouraging employees to take lunch breaks for healthier workforce.

bakioka 3 years ago |

It's about power like the other one just said. Workers are in a weak position unless there is a surplus of demand. Or you know, actually unionize for gods sake.

ipaddr 3 years ago | |

I've been thinking about unions. I think unions would naturally form over rto and other issues in big tech but the average length of employment is short and they dangle options to keep you waiting for 4 years that the only people left fear their own role and won't cause waves because they have discovered ways to stick around and want to keep that advantage to themselves.

Matjes 3 years ago |

From my conversations with other founders / people in businesses or startups, it is more a "it depends". And this may be measured on two dimensions. (A) Depending on a given function and (B) the culture business aims to have (remote / not remote / partially-remote ok / hybrid).

(A) From what I can see, the more tech heavy a given role, the more remote is OK. For non-technical roles, I see fewer remote options. Especially during Covid times, when I spoke with CTOs, they all mentioned how well fully remote works for their teams. Which is quite different to the results in other functions.

(B) Is pretty much a decision from the founding team and the early members of the business + how well the collaboration works. I see fundamentally different approaches here and all can lead to great results.

I currently also often see a somewhat hybrid model, i.e., companies trying to have the staff in the office e.g., on a Tuesday and Thursday...

jstx1 3 years ago |

> The best I have is that this is some kind of power play but I'm not convinced. Am I missing something?

You can consider that not everyone has the same preferences as you. Many people are more productive and happier working from an office and meeting their colleauges in person.

Forcing people into limited open space with unassigned seats sounds like terrible execution of return to office but in general RTO doesn't have to be some kind of conspiracy.

jollyllama 3 years ago |

Most of the people in management don't have good metrics by which to judge productivity of teams, let alone individuals. Even if they do, they want more. Being able to see butts in seats gives them confidence and allows them to feel good. It's partly rational and partly irrational. Devs/Engineers for some reason have a hard time understanding this.

gtirloni 3 years ago |

FAANG wants remote work to go away. It's not, but they do have influence in the industry.

johlits 3 years ago |

Unpopular take: Regular work should be done in the office. We are only creating more jealousy from other sectors otherwise. If you want to work from home, start your own business.

trallnag 3 years ago | |

That's a ridiculous take. Are we now all supposed to move with our gear to ditches in the streets because this is where pipeline construction workers reside?

dyeje 3 years ago |

If anything it’s going to accelerate as companies realize that remote works and that they can hire people in LCOL countries for a fraction of the cost.

masukomi 3 years ago |

because if i can't see you sitting in a chair in the office how can i "know" you're working? You could be slacking off! Why you're probably slacking off on HN right now!

If your butt is in an office chair then obviously you're "working" and not slacking.

[sarcasm]

usgroup 3 years ago |

Well 2 year of COVID created a sudden demand which is now levelling out as contracts turnover.

cableshaft 3 years ago |

Because fuck you, that's why.

Pretty much what it boils down to. A lot of executives hated that employees got so much power during the pandemic (even though it's still miniscule compared to the power the executives have themselves) and they couldn't wait to take it back away from them. Now that there's a bit of a downturn (at least in tech jobs), they're taking advantage of it to force things back to the way it used to be.

Nevermind it's completely unnecessary and damaging to the planet, they're just going to pretend that watercooler talk is the biggest and most important thing in a company ever, so they simply cannot abide by you skipping your commute.