Going to office has been the best possible thing for me. I can see my coworkers, understand the expectations set for me, get instant help from coworkers (and often provide instant help). My anxiety is better and my health is better. I'm not distracted by the 10,000 things around my house that I either want to do or need to do.

That being said, that's only my experience. I think the research shows that remote work is just as productive, if not better. It's better for people who really need to take care of personal things during work hours. The opposition to remote work is far too forceful, especially when companies don't even intend to back up their threats (like in your case). Leadership in many companies seems against the idea for WFH for all the wrong reasons. They need to understand it's a real risk trying to force employees to come back to the office, and you can certainly lose some very important talent by doing that.

The whole reason FANG companies hire new grades is because a small fraction will become superstars in a few years. And a small handful of those superstars will stay out of loyalty/comfort/inertia. New grads are basically deep out of the money, long-dated call options. Companies aren't going to care whether it takes them 3 months or 6 months to get acclimated to the org's culture.

Plus reading here about certain companies' interest in pruning people ruthlessly...

I could see why morale among new hires would be problematic in this rather chaotic time.

That's all done in chat now. Which on a personal level, that's how I've done it for a quarter of a century, but it's like that at work now too.

Additionally, someone who's new is much easier to spot and thus be reminded of when they're physically proximate. Someone new on chat who doesn't have much to contribute yet can very easily vanish, so while they may be able to pull information from others, much less information will be deliberately pushed their way.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but we have millennia of culture and evolution built around in-person interactions.

I haven't seen that. What type of conversations that used to be public are you seeing being moved to private now that things are done through chat?

So if today's new grads are telling you "I'm drowning" and two years ago they weren't... maybe you should listen.

And measured productivity is only half of it if a sizable fraction of those frustrated new grads leave much sooner than they would otherwise.

Or if "new grad" experiences also tend to match "new hire" experiences even for experienced folks...

It's absolutely vital to recreate the same onboarding experience (seeing someone all day, being there whenever a question is asked, etc) virtually, and that means putting in the extra effort in making onesself available, checking in, and being proactive.

I was a new grad in the analog world. The same kind of uncertainty existed for me. Sometimes a coworker who was supposed to help me just didn't talk to me. Many managers were just as poor then as they are now, in person or online, at setting and communicating expectations.

And there were additional problems in person that don't exist in the same way online. Particularly for women ... bullying and inappropriate attention from the men; envy and criticism from the women.

Also, early on in this pandemic, people and companies were scrambling in general. So, the chaos of onboarding may not have been a problem with onboarding per se, or even with companies not handling it "well" but just a shared difficulty.

Nurturing early career engineers in a remote setting is definitely something companies need to get better at.

You helped your company by saving senior engineers' precious time.

I miss the delineation between work and home. I've lost it.

I agree with both perspectives and not sure what I prefer but do think the team should be consistent (all remote or all in person). I don't want to have standup with 8 engineers in person and 1 engineer remote on VC.

On gameday several members of the coaching staff for football teams are in skyboxes in the stadium removed from the players and coaches on the field. That is because they prefer to have an aerial view that allows them to see the game better. It works better for them and therefore it works better for the team. Your analogy doesn't provide the obvious answer you think it does.

Anecdotally, my company had an office team and a remote team split about 50/50 before and unrelated to COVID, and it was tricky. We don't have a lot of meetings, but when we did, it was hard to have a physical group in a conference room with a remote group on a screen. We solved that by effectively going fully remote for meetings that involved remote employees - everyone who was physically in the office would connect to a video call at their individual desks. I was personally fine with it, but some people definitely prefer (and work better in) that physical conference room setting.

All of that to say, the way one person works might be a forcing factor for others, even if they don't intend for it to be. Tricky problem.

>We solved that by effectively going fully remote for meetings that involved remote employees

Yes, this is the process that teams within my extended team mostly follow.

I'm thinking this is where companies will be headed. For employees who want to work remotely, let them. For everyone else, either rent them small offices or allow them to come to the office as they choose.

Let's be honest, most of us didn't have a problem with the office, most of us had a problem with the open office and the commute, both of which are solvable. This remote work trend will peak (I don't know when, but it will), and we will come full circle back to offices again, and the ones that offer an office with a door will reap the rewards. Hopefully by then America has also figured out the infrastructure issue.

We are planning to start 2 days in the office in September. I'm hoping it gets delayed. I would love to have an office with a door again but I'm just happy we don't have a giant table with an open floorplan like some of my friends.

I kinda agree with this. at least, I wouldn't mind going to the office if it was a pleasant ten minute walk from my home. but how is the commute a solvable problem? many offices are located in suburban office parks. no one wants to live there. and desirable neighborhoods within walking distance of good employers are, well, desirable. you can't pay everyone enough money to live in the same nice places where everyone else also wants to live.

By holding politicians feet to the fire when they've acted like infrastructure is their number one priority for the past 30 years. We should have high speed rail connecting every major city at this point but for some godforsaken reason we don't. We should have light rails and cable cars, and other green forms of transportation lightening the car load, and down the road, heavier investment in driverless technology (as well as supporting infrastructure) can almost eliminate congestion.

Sounds like a lot, but America has done more in less time. We just have allowed cynicism and paralysis to take over.

I'm enjoying working from home along with the sights and sounds, except for leaf blowers. I can look out my window and watch squirrels play. Luckily I only have one neighbor with a dog and it doesn't bark much. But this comment makes me wonder why you bother having a dog if you don't even like the sounds they make.

And I'm not ready for spending 3 hours in a car everyday. That's a slow suicide

The real sticking point seems to be attendance requirements.

Having to go somewhere every day even if it takes 3 hours to get there and back, whether you're more productive there or not.

Having to be there certain hours, even if a slight shift in hours would save you thousands of dollars a year in childcare expenses.

Having to sit at the desk until 5 pm (or longer) for show, even if you're a salaried employee, are fried from numerous meetings or an intense thinking job, and spent other time -- not at the desk -- thinking about work problems.

Having to work all of your 8-10 hours in a row, even if you would be more productive if you broke it up into 1-4 hour bursts spread throughout the day.

God. Damn. Right.

And because it is most certainly apparent no loyalty exists and now I have to factor in the risk you let me go (a.k.a. fire) me in 6 months if the right opportunity arises. To hell if I want to keep working in a place where I'm always needing to watch my back and be ready to find something else anyways. Good riddance!

It's not very professional, but I feel like I have to say, "do X or I'm going to quit". Not very professional, and probably wouldn't go over well, but saying it politely doesn't seem to get the message across.

Just go find what you think will make you happy.

Are these concerns of being careful of what we wish for too premature?

Canada or Central or South America, on the other hand... could be a lot of opportunity for people there.

Does that worry you?

Is this necessarily bad? No, but be prepared for more competition and maybe needing to move to an even lower cost area than you’d imagined.

I don’t think the solution here is for every company to become “remote-friendly.” I think it’s for remote companies like Automattic, Gitlab, and Invision to exist, and for remote-desiring engineers to get jobs there.

On the other hand I work with extroverted young folks that are sitting on the edge of their bed all day in a stuffy bedroom with one window so they can work from the top of their dresser in an apartment with three other roommates.

Ideally, for me, I'd be in office two days a week (and no more). I'm much more productive on my technical tasks at home.

Disclaimer: I realize not everyone would share that point of view (and clearly having an office in the woods is working well for you), but that's my perspective on it.

I'm chill and think I respect the "WFH forever" crowd a lot. I just would love to be able to have my home office be for my hobbies again and it was hard to even mention this at work without someone aggressively jumping on me because I'm a shill for the big tech executive caste that wants us all "trapped" in the office again. I changed employers recently because of this to a company that has more of an office culture.

This is one of the sticking points in this discussion, I think.

(Leaving aside the issue of long commutes.) Why do people's actual hours sitting at the desk need to policed?

I think in a great office culture people are going to the office because they want to, or because they are more productive there. In my experience this is what will happen once a bunch of people are already at the office and remote people can't catch up or feel left behind on some stuff. Also on meetings when there's like four or five people on a room the people on videoconference just can't work at the same level and it's very hard to accommodate for them.

I think it's ok if some companies don't want to go back to the office, but I just think colocated teams perform better. I'd rather be on the teams that perform better. I think maybe for a giant like Google letting everyone go home is not a bad idea, but if you want a tiger team to skunkworks something up for you I think WFH won't cut it. Maybe a few days a week or every other week if you need to a lot of alone work, but not all the time.

This is what the 75min/direction commute to SF would do to me

Let's start with statistically significant proof of the correlation between working from the open office and company profits. That game cuts both ways.

Or, simply let everyone work as and where they wish and apply the same evaluation and retention criteria to everyone. No need to discrimiante against one group.

So essentially, the workers at the remote site have been working (tada) remotely for over 13 years. And they do a great job. We communicate via email, by Teams/Webex, and there's no real difference.

And then COVID comes along and we all WFH for the last 18 months. Now when things appear to be getting better, mgmt is all in a rush to "RTO."

So not only have we proven that we can work well remotely in non-COVID times, but under the immense pressure of COVID, we had record profits.

So now we're going with the worst of all worlds for my team; hybrid. We're allowed to work 1-3 days a week remotely, but the other days we'll be in the office in desk hotels. Sounds like so much fun.

It really boils down to old school VPs/Managers who think butts in seats is how you get work done. And I say this as someone who's closer to retirement age than most.

If a person is equally productive but happier, why not let 'em be happier?