I like this take. Companies like Apple and Google with trillions of dollars and the brightest engineers in the world are facing the theoretical problem that teams will be less productive if they are allowed to remain at home with their families instead of undertaking commutes to the office.

Why does this particular problem fall in the bucket of "throw up our hands and continue doing things the old (old, old, old) fashioned way," unlike all the other problems big tech feels qualified to attempt to innovate a resolution to? Companies that at least initially thrived on rejecting the status quo and doing what was better, even if it was challenging, suddenly abdicating to a status quo that is centuries old and costs everyone huge amounts of our least renewable resource: our time.

In defense of those in senior management, they really like the huge bonuses & exercised stock options they get for themselves when cutting labor costs & boosting stock prices.

But WFH? Less control! No easily tangible up-side! Workers might be happier? So what, how do you quantify that and what will it do to their bonuses, and OMG how can you trust the unwashed masses of anyone below C-levels & their direct reports? /s

Herd mentality. Where the herd animal is a Lemming.

I've long speculated tech companies and their backers use area real estate holdings to hedge their investments.

If people stop living and/or working local to their investments, the value plummets and the hedge no longer works.

Management at all levels across all SV tech companies personally own homes whose value depends on centralization.

Are real estate holdings that much of a factor? Office leases seem more common than a purchase that generates equity, at least at medium/small companies, and some larger ones too that may have a headquarters but also lease in peripheral sites.

In that sense, I'm wondering if the push to get back in the office is more about "Damnit we're locked into a 10 year lease on this space, we're sure as hell not going to let it go empty, get those workers back in these seats!"

I don't know, it's a vague speculation that sometimes feels like a conspiracy theory when I dwell on it.

But I've worked at a couple VC funded SV startups and it wasn't exactly unusual for our investors to show up in the office and see how things are going, get a tour, have meetings. I doubt it's a contractual obligation of any sort, but there's clearly pressure to have a staffed office both local and impressive to the investors.

This left me assuming the VCs on Sand Hill Road would hold substantial real estate in the area, both commercial and residential. You're far more willing to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at high-risk investments if you can be confident they'll be throwing most of that money at office leases in the area, and salaries spent on rents and/or inflated bubble mortgages in the area. Especially if you can be confident all your investing peers on Sand Hill are doing the same, further inflating the bubble. The businesses will probably flop, but most that money just comes back through the real estate side provided you keep it all concentrated locally.

Ah, yes, that's true: If the companies are paying leases to properties owned by their investors, that changes things a bit. (For the investors though, not the companies)

I agree with you, but these companies all own a lot of real estate they need to be able to justify on their balance sheets. Apple just built a giant new campus before The Event so of course they want to justify it by seeing butts in chairs.

I’m sure the (widely considered, not universally) most innovative and maybe most profitable company in the world could figure out something to do with that office space.

Perhaps make it a hub for more teams, and close down rental spaces all over the bay. Make the gym and cafeteria way bigger.

Obviously this is arm chair thinking on my part, but I find it hard to believe that given enough thought they couldn’t make the numbers work out.

Or just accept that the numbers don’t work out. The numbers cannot possibly have worked out for the past year, but it hasn’t hurt them any.

> Apple just built a giant new campus before The Event so of course they want to justify it by seeing butts in chairs.

Same with Asana, whose founder recently announced[1] "Asana will have an office-centric synchronized hybrid environment," which is another way of saying "employees may work from home on Wednesdays only."

[1] https://twitter.com/moskov/status/1384556019636862982

Before the pandemic, Apple's problem was having far too many employees to fit in the spaceship. They can probably fill that campus just with people voluntarily returning.

I'm guessing you're referencing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnd1jKcfBRE

Sublease! Imagine the social capital a company could get by bragging about being located on the Apple campus. That would be worth a high premium over other leased spaces.

> trailblazing engines of innovation

There is a very real possibility that allowing 100% remote work could very well prevent them from being "trailblazing engines of innovation". So many things start as adhoc idea's from a random discussion that would never have happened without being in the same location.

Random discussion can happen anywhere, anytime. That's the neat thing about random.

No they really can't. The number of random discussion that lead into whiteboard interesting solution to problems we run into infrequent or about the overall direction of our product have dropped to near 0 since I've been working remote.

Work has gotten easier in this remote world as it turned my whole team into input / output engines with very little thought along the way but god it's sucked all the creativity out of our work and removed most of the critical review of any product decision.

I've experienced this too; sure, work is getting done, but it's so difficult to be creative in a way that gets people excited and thinking about problems and their solutions to make our (and our user's) lives better.

Coming up with projects that are impactful and novel is a large part of our jobs, and creative velocity has nose-dived since everyone went remote. There's just (to me) no substitute for hallway chat, overhearing people arguing and getting involved, or coming across an interesting white boarding conversation. One person at a time talking on a scheduled webex is just not at all the same.

This discovery issue is why I advocate for room based, not call based communication (Dicord channels are surprisingly great, Mumble would probably do too). It certainly doesn't solve all of the problems, but I find it can alleviate them a bit.

At my previous gig (all remote, a startup) we had plenty of creative and productive random discussions. They'd start on slack and then progress to zoom.

So it's possible, but it certainly _felt_ different than the random discussions I'd had at in-person companies.

I can't quite put my finger on it, though. With the remote startup, there was no choice...?

Ahhh, I don't know. I'm a strong hybrid WFH advocate, but I've been embedded in operational areas, not centralized IT, for most of my career. And hearing conversations, walking past a meeting and catching a snippet of a problem I can solve for them, having rando non-IT staff knock on my door on the way to the bathroom... all of those experiences have contributed to some of the more impactful things I've produced over the years.

It's hard to have random conversations WFH when they're usually prefaced on running into someone in the hallway or saying a quick "hello" as you walk past their cubicle/office/whatever.

Best troubleshooting and discussions I’ve had was getting several people to a white board and going over things. Never been able to replicate remote

I've been able to do that on group calls with a shared screen. MS Teams has been excellent for that.

They can also happen in a chat room or a video call. How often does that kind of conversation organically happen in an office? Maybe with extroverts but introverts tend to keep to themselves in person. They would be more likely to come up with something via chat or video call.

Two introverts might keep to themselves, but an extrovert passing an introvert in the hallway may spark a conversation, or take a quick detour by their cubicle/office on the way to the break room. Introvert-Introvert adhoc might not be any different with WFH, but Introvert-Extrovert & Extrovert-Extrovert would definitely suffer for being harder to achieve organically & adhoc.

That would make a hybrid option more palatable since it would in theory allow for more of those kinds of in-person interactions instead of just WFH.

The Tyranny of the Extroverted

...of the NPD.

I doubt Apple is forcing people back to the office without regard for what remote work proponents are saying. At the end of the day, once debate has ended, which is clearly has (at Apple, anyway), isn't it the company's decision and you can leave or deal with it?

We will see. If bigger companies like Apple do allow it, smaller ones will be incentivized to also adopt broader remote work policies or risk losing employees to the former.

Right, if it makes Apple less competitive then Apple leadership has to deal with that.

They're betting on that not being the case (at least not enough to change one of their defining work-culture tenants -- face to face, in-person work is more productive and innovative). Only time will tell.

But work is not typically a democracy and there's time for consensus and if it doesn't go your way, you can leave or stay and commit.

I think employee demand is going to make a difference. If enough people demand it, these companies will need to bend.

Employee demand will matter to the extent that there's some level of employer supply in the market. If most employers hold the line, there isn't much for employees to choose from, unless they're one of the very fortunate few who have the luxury of deciding not to work until the appropriate opportunity comes along. If large numbers of employees can't afford to hold out for better WFH policies, then plenty of companies won't need to offer them.

The thing is, a lot of companies are offering 100% now. There is a shift going on. It probably won't be a particularly big shift until larger companies get on board, but it's still moving the status quo little by little.

If so then you're absolutely right. If there ever a small % offering 100% and a larger % offering hybrid, that could be the lever that shifts the boulder.

I don’t think it’s ever this black and white. If enough employees feel strongly enough about this to quit it’s essentially not the companies decision any more (unless they want to sink their own ship).

Hybrid, like Apple is allowing, seems a decent compromise, though I think the balance could reasonably be at 3 or 4 days WFH instead of 2. And if someone has a good track record why not let it be all WFH?

I do see some value in having a presence in the office, at least for myself in my own position: My boss & I have to work extremely close together, and that goes more smoothly in person. But it doesn't need to be everyday, and it still works out okay with phone calls & texts & adhoc Zoom meetings.

I think employers should be open to what works best for each employee. I am currently WFH but I do server work so I do occasionally need to go to the office for configuring or picking up equipment. I would be okay with doing a hybrid option because of that. If I had to go back to the office full time, I would definitely start looking elsewhere.

Pretty much agreed-- I can understand wanting new/junior employees to develop a good track record before complete WFH. But it also seems reasonable to let a new hire that might otherwise have to relocate across the country that level of freedom and simply deal with the issue if they don't produce: not much different than how you'd deal with a new in-person employee.

I will say that, for myself, I understand my work behavior very well. If I could choose any style, it wouldn't be complete WFH. It would be 3 days WFH, 2 days in office. Just a quirk of my personality that I tend to be more focused in the office, and the time I spend there gives me a fairly regimented view of what I need to accomplish during WFH time.

Which is completely what you said: do what worked best for each employee.

Many of these companies invested tons of money in commercial real estate and can’t afford for that to have been a bad investment. Apple is a great example. They built a spaceship.

Apple could light 10 billion dollars on fire and I'm not sure it would affect their stock price.

People are legitimately quitting over this. If they don't want to have employee shortages, they will need to adapt and allow it.

I've been effectively remote for years. But do you honestly believe that the highest-paying SV tech employers will have a problem hiring people because they're less remote-friendly than some other companies are?

I think the pandemic changed things a lot more than we give it credit. A lot of jobs were all of a sudden remote and could be done well remotely. I think we are seeing employee preferences shift to remote work if it's possible. If there are remote-friendly opportunities, employees will definitely be leaning towards that in the future.

Agree, I've only seen a handful of recruiter spam that don't explicitly call out 100% remote work. Smaller companies are definitely using this as a lever to siphon off talent from larger, more traditional workplaces.

Sort of.. remote anywhere positions have opened up candidates that don’t live in one of the select few hub cities.

I'm not supporting Apple's position. But I don't think they'll have any trouble finding people so long as they pay premium salaries.

To lean into the idea of "the pandemic changed things a lot more than we give it credit" I have seen a lot of folks realized (very suddenly!) that they needed to re-prioritize things in their lives and that work/money isn't the most important thing to them.

I don't think Apple et al. will have trouble finding talent, but they may have trouble attracting "the best and brightest" if they require that you go into an office.

Then again, maybe they don't want to hire people who will prioritize mental health and family over work. "Best and brightest" is often a thinly veiled way of saying "willing to over-work and sacrifice personal life for the bottom line".

I think that's totally correct. Anecdotally, I absolutely see people saying that maybe the $300K SV salary isn't worth it.

A $300K salary in the context of $5 million-dollar houses makes much less sense if you can be happy and less stressed with an $80K salary with $150K houses.

Especially when that $5 million dollar house is actually a 750 sq ft condo with no backyard.

Along with premium salaries comes high standards for being hired. Pretty much all large tech companies are constantly hiring employees as long as they meet their high standards. If there is a general shift to remote work and Apple refuses to budge then they will have to make do with less people, raise compensation beyond what it already is, or lower their standards.

The salary may not be premium when comp-vs-cost is factored in.

eg: a 10h weekly commute better be worth at least $75k USD

I'm willing to bet that the majority of people with one hour each-way commutes don't earn $75K total.

Sure, but will they be able to find people worth those salaries?

I believe this is rhetorical but a lot of these companies, while they make many quality products, are coasting off one or two key innovative products. For Apple the Macintosh and the iPhone were prob their revolutionary products. Everything else is small potatoes.