But it's also important to acknowledge that pre-Covid, only a tiny fraction of jobs were remote at all. People who preferred remote work had very little choice in the matter. Our society assumes that commuting to work and sitting in a cubicle (or worse) is fitting for 99% of the work force.
So what I mainly see here aren't the comments you cite, but a "ugh but I like the office", which gets very little sympathy from me in a society where, virus aside, the majority of jobs are office-only. Like, the world is already tipped in your favor.
To put it into perspective, I was so desperate for a fully remote job that I took a $50,000 salary for it when I was making $130,000 in Austin, Texas. Now I live in South America on a beach doing exactly what I want to be doing.
I don't like the optics of calling Covid a "good thing", but it must be pointed out that it got offices (like my former job) that were adamantly ass-in-seat only to go remote-only. It spurred fundamental (hopefully lasting) shifts in our work culture. And a lot of them were a long time in the making and waiting. How many of these companies that were firmly ass-in-seat are now fully or mostly remote realizing that the sky isn't falling? I hope we reach a better equilibrium.
Ideally our employment options would have something for everyone without you needing to go for a $50k job to get what you want. Another culture change I'd like is for WFH options to come with a signing bonus to get your home office sorted out, something that's sorely lacking.
It's completely understandable that work has taken such a central place in many people's lives. It's probably not ideal, but it is completely understandable.
As to space, co working isn't the same as an office and having an home office requires moving and spending a lot of money. Many of us don't have expensive commutes that offset that cost
As a Product Manager, working remotely 100% of the time is absolute hell. And I say this as someone who was already working from home ~70% of the time before (and I was mostly ok with that).
I also wanted to pick on a few of the categories you mentioned:
> "only incompetent managers need to see you in person"
Some of the best work I've done is when I'm able to go brainstorm in a room with my leadership. Lacking the ability to do this as we plan our next release, or the next 3 year strategy or whatnot is extremely difficult.
Having competent management means that they understand when this is valuable and when it's not.
> "your co-workers aren't your friends"
I hear this a lot, and I have to feel bad for people who have never experienced true friendship at work. At each of my jobs, I've made lifelong friends. Friends I've since vacationed with, stood up as a groomsman in a weeding for, etc. This is part of what made those jobs so rewarding.
I think the general thought is that "jobs change, so that 'friend' might not be around next week", and that's true. But in my experience, if they're true friends, changing jobs doesn't change that.
This says more about me than anything, but where else am I going to meet friends?
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All of this to say, in addition to being tone-deaf in light of the current reality in the world, these sentiments are also suspect under normal circumstances.
These things may be true for some people at their place of employment, or for them personally, but it's hard to understand where this comes from.
The only thing I miss is taking walks with coworkers. That is where the real value was for me. Something about walking and talking that is so beneficial.
Can you do this in a virtual room? Yes. Will you achieve the same outcome? Early results (in my case) seem to indicate the answer is "no".
I want the ability to pace around the room at times. Look my collaborators in the eye. Pick up on non-verbal cues that are often impossible to see remotely. Step away as a group to share a much needed lunch break.
And when passionate people are involved, and many viewpoints are present, the ability to all argue/debate a topic vigorously - even show frustration at the right moments - and then all share a beer at the end of the day, is critical. Having that same vigorous debate on Zoom and then dropping off to our individual lives doesn't leave room for reconnecting with each other as humans - something that is critical for maintaining relationships.
Not every project requires this kind of interaction. But for things that do, the remote format just doesn't work well for everyone.
Given the ability to do so, I do wonder how much of the concerns around remote work could be resolved.
I won't say it's a perfect substitute, but not doing those things would be a disaster.
That suggests you and your team have communication issues and meeting in person is just a plaster over it. Why exactly do you need to see other team members in person?
> I have to feel bad for people who have never experienced true friendship at work
Why do you think getting friendly with people at work is appropriate? Mixing work and personal life will introduce unconscious bias and you will give different treatment to people who didn't invite you to their weeding. This is bad for business.
It seems like you just feel lonely and you use workplace to find friends. Can you see how wrong that sounds?
Did you think about finding a hobby, getting good at something other than work and meet people that way? (there is plenty of meetups for people sharing the same interests)
That's an interesting conclusion. What makes you believe that?
Would you say the same thing to a band trying to practice together...virtually/remotely? Why or why not?
> Why exactly do you need to see other team members in person?
I covered this in another comment under this thread.
> Why do you think getting friendly with people at work is appropriate? Mixing work and personal life will introduce unconscious bias and you will give different treatment to people who didn't invite you to their weeding. This is bad for business.
I see you're intentionally being snarky about my typo.
But on topic - again, I ask, what makes you believe that? There are plenty of studies and psychologists who would disagree with you. Go read some of the articles on Harvard Business Review that explore the dynamics of friendship at work, and how important / rewarding they can be.
> It seems like you just feel lonely and you use workplace to find friends. Can you see how wrong that sounds?
I'm not lonely. I'm also an introvert. But when friendships form, it's a beautiful thing.
Why do you believe this to be so "wrong"?
It's a simple matter of simplicity and practicality. I'm more likely to meet like-minded people in the workplace, and those people aren't necessarily even on my team or even in the same department.
As I mentioned in my parent comment, I do feel bad for people who have not had a chance to experience this - it seems you fall into that category.
> Did you think about finding a hobby, getting good at something other than work and meet people that way? (there is plenty of meetups for people sharing the same interests)
Of course! And I do those things, too. But my hobbies tend toward solitary activities (cycling, tinkering with electronics, coding side projects). Yeah, I meet interesting people at the local Raspberry Pi enthusiasts meetup, but rarely people I'll form close friendships with.
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Friendship at work might not be right for you. But don't mistake that with it being "wrong" or "inappropriate" for everyone.
I'm genuinely curious (and feel free not to reveal anything you aren't comfortable sharing), but I really wonder if age/geo/length of career factor into this.
Often, the mindset you're promoting seems to come from a lack of maturity and understanding of the importance of relationships in the workplace. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case for you, personally but I'm genuinely curious to understand where you're coming from when there's so much evidence to the contrary.
Productivity is not the be-all end-all of a career! Human interaction (of any kind) is important, "wasting" time going to lunch with colleagues is important, serendipitous encounters at the coffee machine are important.
I know for certain if my employer decides to go permanent remote, I'll be looking for another employer. This is not the way I want to live and work.
Also, long hours are not equal to productivity, and believing that they are is a quick route to burnout (which sucks, and you should try to avoid).
If you've watched Red Dwarf, the entire reason that Rimmer was brought back as a hologram, was so that Dave would not go insane.
And another crew member could have been brought back, but Holly determined that Rimmer would be best. The conflict, you see, was required.
Many here decry the "waste of time" of being interrupted. Their attention divided. Yet you're indicating that after a few months of endless, day long shifts free of interruption, productivity has dropped a bit.
It appears for some, Holly was right. You need a Rimmer.
I think people need to realize that human interaction exists beyond the office.
Also, I think we should fully support what's suitable for people. I want to work remotely, but I want you to be able to work the way to prefer as well.
I've noticed as of late HN has been riddled with comments such as: here is my extremely strong thoughts on X with my personal anecdotal experience Y, and therefore this is how the world should work.
> I believe it will be especially bad for those early in their careers
Agreed. I think it can be equally has bad for someone midway into their career who is thinking about taking on more leadership opportunities.
1) If we have Dropbox Studios, who dictates the frequency of those visits? If a manager dictates, there will be resentment of some sorts. If its a democratic vote, what about the people that can't make that date?
2) Assuming the dates have been finalized, the people that cannot make that date are at a disadvantage. They might not be in driving distance to a hub or for other reasons. That would mean information again has to be propagated back virtually for all members.
3) If a date is set and all the necessary people have come together, is it essentially a company day off? If the goal is to meet and talk to people without doing solo-work, I would assume its filled with meetings or events. If this is true, this doesn't make sense to do it too frequently. If done infrequently, it defeats the purposes of these studios.
All of the thoughts so far don't even go through the cliques / groups that would form that can be gatekeepers of information for true remote workers that can't meetup.
The visits are either dictated by policy or agreed upon by the participants. A place will probably want both, a low frequency one by policy and freedom for the employees to set any frequency to themselves. Voting doesn't make any sense, you need all the participants to agree on a date.
The policy meetings ought to be fixed and with a low enough frequency that people can plan their lives after them. Like once every 6 months. Otherwise people will resent them.
After a date is set and the people come together, they can work on whatever they decided to have the meeting for. Of course, it's probably not for doing solo-work, but the company shouldn't dictate a lot here. It would go counter to the goal of the studios.
I imagine the company expects every worker to be able to meetup at some point.
- most ideas are bad,
- judgement is a crapshoot but improves the odds up to 50/50,
- trying and either rejecting or committing (or going bankrupt) gets the odds of the better solution prevailing in the market up to 60-odd percent.
Plenty of confounding variables, lots of opportunity to get unlucky and draw the wrong conclusions (or just have your priors overrule weak evidence against them), but it's science and we haven't found anything better yet.
There are a lot of incentives to stake out positions. People don't really want to be fully remote at a company where most of their co-workers go back into the office most of the time and people mostly don't want to go back into an office where it's mostly just teams having all-day meetings now and then.
Ehh I think this comment is what the root comment was critisizing. I think a more empathetic lens is that you can either provide a remote-first or in-office-first experience for a team, and that at a larger office many or most teams being remote-first would detract from the office-first experience. I think it's short sighted to assume that having 200 people primarily in the office would be significantly different than 400 people, for example, but going from 400 to 10 certainly would.
The good thing is that after companies finish out corona, engineers will have more remote-first work options and still plenty of office-first options - I don't think there will be much in the way of hostage taking, but I'm sure some folks will be (rightfully) miffed if they joined a team for one experience and post-pandemic are getting a different one. They are also able to find a new job :)
Replace Zoom with whatever meeting solution you like, but it's probably for the best that all meetings be on some sort of meeting platform long term.
At least in my experience, people seldom take notes during meetings; they rely on their memory and forget about everyone else that didn't attend. Not to mention that if you're typing on your machine during a meeting it's assumed that you're not paying attention. Even just recording everything can be good so you can go back later to review critical decisions.
> People don't really want to be fully remote at a company where most of their co-workers go back into the office most of the time
At least from my perspective, I dread this idea because, as employees who were already mostly remote found out a long time ago, employees at the office will typically neglect remote coworkers. Be it through not meeting in an accessible format, not sharing important decisions, or similar oversights.
I've personally experienced great improvements in terms of team coordination due to WFH: we've scheduled meetings in advance, we have notes for key decisions, there are proper documents for inter-team coordination (instead of relying on memory and ad-hoc discussions), etc..
> people mostly don't want to go back into an office where it's mostly just teams having all-day meetings now and then.
Do you mean the scenario where employees come in a limited number of days for meetings? Or where everyone is in the office 100% of the time with certain days that are all meetings?
Personally, I think the former makes best use of in-office time. This does vary per person, but I think the best use of the office is as a collaborative space; it's the main feature everyone seems to be lamenting. So use it for its advantages.
So get the collaborative benefits and then let everyone else get their work done. This is much more personal, but I absolutely hated people dropping into my team neighborhood and interrupting me with questions/trying to locate someone. If you want some of my work time, that's OK, but you can't do it whenever you feel like it; schedule time and stop pre-empting my tasks.
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WFH in general seems to require more structure than in-office work. This adds some overhead for individual employees, but likely will result in massive gains long term. If your meetings are scheduled, there's more time to prepare. If everyone is taking notes, then there's less need for meetings to understand decisions made elsewhere.
Ancillary communication tools were severely under-used before WFH. I'd be happy if we went mixed-office after learning how to coordinate more effectively, but I consider it likely that in the rush to get back people will drop the ball and work will reset to in-office vs WFH.
What I meant is that individuals who would prefer to be in an an office come in and mostly the only other people there are other groups doing their own thing.
And I agree about the structure. Where I work, people have been pretty good about using shared docs--Etherpad for a long time and Google Docs now. But with everyone on video calls, shared docs are now used pretty religiously for most meetings.
Also agree about the use of office. I'm happy to come into an office now and then if it's for a particular purpose. I've no interest in coming into one to work individually or maybe run into someone and have a serendipitous conversation. Serendipity is fine but it's actually pretty inefficient.
The last 6 months isn't really representative of why we should or should not be encouraging WFH, but it at least seems to have opened more doors to accommodating it as an option in companies that would have previously been against it.
Of course, WFH is a mixed bag and I expect 100% remote to be rare but I do expect a lot more flexibility at many companies.
The pendulum is now swinging in WFH's favor and those who it benefits want to cement it as a very viable and practical alternative to the traditional office model.
Wanting to work from home generally means just that, wanting to work from home. Not wanting to work from home however usually really means "I don't want others to be able to work from home", it's about taking options away from other people. The exception being people who don't want to work from home because they have a pack of screaming children at home, etc - in their case saying they don't want to work from home is actually honest.
Your comment is a good example. For your perceived issues to be resolved, we need to make other people work at the office. The idea that others shouldn't have the option to work from home because them being at the office helps someone else build their network is not something I can agree with.
Sometimes the commute is just too stressful, even if you live in the city. My partner's well-being has visibly improved due to going into the office only when necessary.
Maybe WFH should be renamed to something else. It doesn't capture all the subtleties of flexibility and choice we're asking for.
I don't think I ever realized how much of this venting must have subtly happened in person, but since COVID I think most of it gets bottled up and people get very frustrated when they can't casually talk through these issues in person. My team has collectively agreed that these "venting calls" are great if only for the reason that they make you aware that you're not the only one with frustrations, and I think that really helps morale.
I hadn't considered this angle before reading your comment, but the psychological impact of this alone is huge. As any therapist will tell you, working through frustrations and integrating negative experiences instead of bottling them up is crucial.
This is something I already struggled with prior to COVID, and I've been seeing a therapist for years now for this (and many other) reasons.
The thing about bottling things up is that it kind of "works" for awhile. Until it doesn't.
So we probably haven't even started to see the longer term impact this will have over time.
Cars were invented in an era where cities were not as dense, and where jobs were mostly done in person. With the advent of the internet and personal computers, this is changing, that you want it or not.
Redesigning cities is glacially slow even with a clear political will, but taking a bunch of people off the roads at peak times is quick and relatively painless.
I hope in the future companies will allow people to work the way they prefer, whether that's in office, remote or something in between.
For many (most?) people this has been the worst working situation of their lives, and attempts to minimize that are insulting. I believe it will be especially bad for those early in their careers, trying to find their footing, get mentorship, and build their network.