But real estate costs have made this approach untenable, so something has to give.
I need a citation here. Big tech was so large and profitable the last decade that thinking it’s real estate costs that led them to open office spaces and not a flawed ideology re: work and collaboration.
The downsides of an open floor plan can be at least partially countered by headphones, but there's much less that you can do on an individual level to make up for having that much of your personal time locked up in pure transit.
Reasonably, one company could give everyone an office but there’s no way everyone could do it at once.
Assuming it's the same price per square foot for commercial space, that's less than $1000 a month for a 100 square foot office for each employee. Considering these employees are making more than 20x that, if offices could improve their productivity, it seems like it'd be well worthwhile
You are talking about increasing the per capita headcount sixfold from 16 sq ft to 100. That’s going to have a significant effect on real estate cost.
Presumably the higher ups legitimately believe that the open office plans are better for the company, which fits with how insistent most of them are to get butts back in seats now despite almost everyone hating the commute and the office life
I also can only assume that it plays a role in office real-estate costs too, just like it does on housing costs.
I don't understand this argument. How is online chat not easy? With slack, I can fire off a question to any coworker instantly. I don't have to physically relocate myself to wherever they are in the office to ask it. And they can answer when it is appropriate for them, rather then be disturbed by my incursion into their space. If it's something that requires a conversation, then we schedule time to have a video chat or instantly transition to realtime video if convenient for both of us.
And how are group meetings not easy online? Online we can see / hear each other in near real time, we can type on the same document an see each other's edits in near real time, we can draw...I mean...What are people doing during group meetings that are difficult without physical presence?
And all the evidence agrees. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-unintended-consequences...
Musk represents the old guard who liked making people suffer these horrible commutes and office environments just to make senior mgmt feel important.
As a result, I think it's important to defend 100% remote as a pro-employee position, and then look to optional onsite as a way to mitigate potential issues such as isolation, young folks with roomates etc.
However, that is sadly irrelevant to this news item, as Musk isn't banning remote work because of any logical consideration of its merits. He's banning remote work because he's an authoritarian micromanager who believes that workers are to be treated like cattle.
During a keynote speech on May 10, Elon Musk commended Tesla factory workers in China for working under conditions that break labor laws in many parts of the world — including those in China, as The Guardian pointed out. The high praise from Elon went out to workers who are being pushed to meet production goals in the middle of pandemic lockdowns, which have been ongoing at the Gigafactory in Shanghai since April. The Tesla CEO went on to compare Chinese workers with their American counterparts, who Musk says lack work ethic he considers impressive and vital for EV companies to succeed.
"There’s just a lot of super talented and hardworking people in China that strongly believe in manufacturing. And they won’t just be burning the midnight oil. They’ll be burning the 3am oil. So they won’t even leave the factory type of thing. Whereas in America, people are trying to avoid going to work at all."
Going by what Musk says, it sure sounds like what they say is true: nobody wants to work anymore. That is, except for workers in China, where conditions enabling Tesla to meet production goals during lockdowns have less to do with burning oil past midnight, and more to do with China’s extreme work culture. Meaning Musk isn’t really praising hardworking people so much as a disregard for labor rules.
During the lockdowns, workers at the Gigafactory reportedly worked 12-hour shifts, six days a week and slept on the floor. Again, that’s not only during recent lockdowns. This is actually common enough to be nicknamed “996.” That’s shorthand for work shifts going from 9am to 9pm, six days a week.
No, he's advocating for effective, efficient (and limited) government regulation.
> He's banning remote work because he's an authoritarian micromanager
You don't know why he's banning remote work, and you're guessing that its the most inflammatory reason you can come up with. You do not know.
Really, the idea that there isn't a connection is the less likely option. I think it's on you to prove that, not on others to disprove it. "When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras."
Every company is spending "their own money" to pay employees. It doesn't matter if there are a thousand shareholders or just one. There is still a corporate structure and formal employee relationships. They are employees, not serfs, and they deserve the respect that entails.
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-employees-reveal-most-...
A former production employee who worked at the company over 10 years ago said he was surprised by his coworkers' attitude toward Musk.
"When he walked by, people would bow down to him," the former employee said. "That was kind of surprising to me."
If you're claiming his paying them out-of-pocket, can you provide a citation?
Beyond that, all behavior is not reasonable just because it's done with ones own money.
If it is the former it is really uncalled for and downplays the struggle of African Americans in the United States.
(Work at home, used to work in an awful office, still nowhere near slavery)
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
Secondly, you have some gall to compare a CEO setting policies that are well within the confines of labor laws with human slavery. Beyond the absurdity of your comparison, don't forget that Twitter employees literally have the right to walk away. That is the antithesis of slavery.
You are doing your own argument a massive disservice by making such absurd accusations. Instead of arguing on the merits of remote vs. in-person work, you invite an argument on your analogies. This is the same as calling anyone you disagree with politically a Nazi. Not only does it debase the absolute evil practiced by actual Nazis, it ends any chance of effective debate.
Be better than that, please.
(To be sure, if OP had used the "N-word" I am quite sure there would be much more condemnation though that would have unfortunately then entirely missed the point.)
That is exactly the problem. The analogy was that Musk akin to a plantation owner, and his prerogative vis-à-vis twitter employees (by virtue of being CEO, a position he gained through a takeover with his "money") is akin to the rights plantation owners practiced vis-à-vis slaves on the plantation. This is exactly what the person I replied to implied.
The problem I had was never with whether a CEO has a right to set policies like banning employees from remote work. The problem is that the analogy directly compared employees to slaves. The former have the right to walk away, the latter never did (without risking death). No matter what the antecedent is (CEOs vs. plantation owners) the subsequent is a false likeness (slave vs. employee).
And I agree that using the "n-word" would have probably been flagged immediately. And if it wasn't, it would be the focus of the comment and not the content. My argument is that functionally this is a distinction without a difference. Saying "Negros" may have insulated the poster from the immediate flagging, the thesis of their argument was equally as flawed independent of the words used. Elon Musk is not a slave-owner[1], Twitter employees are not slaves. No amount of hedging could make that analogy accurate.
[1] Whether the Musk family benefited from de facto slavery within the emerald mining business is a different argument. One that should be discussed, but in the context of exploitation of labor in third-world countries. Furthermore, as others have pointed out in this thread, the treatment of workers in China building Tesla models could be more justifiably argued to be a form of modern-day slavery, as the worker has far less agency to actually quit and still survive. Neither of these points were mentioned in this specific thread, and neither would have much bearing on whether Twitter employees are akin to slaves.
Someone else has helpfully transcribed it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33552970
The official document is here, see page 21 for the transcribed conversation, see plenty of other pages for his callous thought process: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23112929-elon-musk-t...
Also, I think a review of this site’s guidelines is called for:
> Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments.
Part of the cost of being a public figure and a multibillionaire is that people will talk about you without the same collegial tone that they'd use with their peers.
> He calls himself a "nano-manager".
source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-car-pioneer-elon-musk-...
> In conversations with 35 current and former Tesla employees, CEO Elon Musk is described as a polarizing figure who inspires but micromanages to an extreme.
source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/19/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-extreme-...
> Elon Musk says remote workers are just pretending to work.
source: https://fortune.com/2022/07/20/elon-musk-remote-work-from-ho...
Hehe, I wonder how does he think how 100% remote companies continue to work and excel.
Productivity is just corporate speak for, "do what I say when I say it".
Most engineer salaries however are substantially higher on the west coast than in the midwest, much higher than a $12k pay bump that would have covered the difference in housing costs for average 1 bedrooms between these markets.
I don't think its so much that engineers on the west coast pay a lot more in cost of living and therefore have to get a higher salary to put food on the table the same as they do out east. I think its simply that engineers who happen to be on the west coast are tapped into an excellent network of job opportunities and tend to be highly trained, and for companies to get at this network for its talent themselves, they need to pay these inflated west coast rates to get into the door. This is just what the prices of this market have come to be, and they must have gotten to such a point through other factors than the paltry in comparison difference in cost of living.
In northern CA this holds true and even moreso in Seattle. In southern california (notably because you mention Los Angeles), this is not true. There are high paying jobs in SoCal, but they are much scarcer than the talent pool. While there are more opportunities in SoCal than other parts of the west coast, they are lower paying and worse conditions overall that are closer to midwest counterparts. This view is borne of 40 years of experience in SoCal (and everyone I worked with). Moving to Seattle, I instantly made 30% more AND rent was cheaper.
Highest impact is mid project. You know, to make it hurt.
I'm the complete opposite haha, I do much better deep thinking at home. This doesn't invalidate your point, nor am I trying to. More just saying, we all work differently, and all of our styles are equally valid. Hybrid WFH is great :D
I say secretly because usually I'm a strict remote advocate because I acknowledge that executives really would like everyone to be back in the office and I'd rather kill myself than do that.
I don't have kids, so for me productivity is higher at home. However, we're running a hybrid setup at my place of work because it indeed seems to give you the best of both worlds.
To go from zero to one on this, your company now needs to lease space, even if part-time. Your employees are now bound geographically.
At zero, things are dramatically simpler and easier. The only hard thing is - middle management has nowhere to hide with work from home. Performance has to be monitored accurately now, versus the straightforward bums-in-seats-looking-busy-for-eight-hours method.
I feel the U.S. is the last man standing.
For knowledge workers, WAH works well for self motivated, high performing individuals, in a high functioning work environment. You know, the HN people.
My take is, we'll lose competitive edge over time if we insist on WAH for the mass.
Even if productivity was down at home vs at the office aren't we already way too productive anyways ?
Living in the office would also be more productive, and working 10 hours per day, banning weekends, &c.
At the end of the day you have to ask yourself if you're here to grind for 45 years to pay the lifestyle of eccentrics like Musk or to live life ? If it's ok to lose 10% of productivity while regaining hours of your life ?
What I do love is eliminating the commute time. That is time I’ve been able to utilize in other ways that really contribute to my mental well being.
Walking the kids to school (instead of driving), walking the dog, exercise, catch up on chores or errands, etc.
That is probably my favorite aspect of working from home.
I do miss those serendipitous interactions with coworkers. And Zoom fatigue is real. (I’m just waiting for the day when Zoom alerts your manager that the Zoom window is not the active window on your machine)
Wouldn't you experience in-person meeting fatigue sooner than zoom fatigue? What is it about sitting in the comfort of your own home having a conversation that is worse than sitting in an office having a conversation?
I do think there are times when I'm less productivity working from home compared to the office. I also think as a team we're less creative. Some of the best stuff I've done in my career has come out of casual conversations with my team about the stuff we're building. I've noticed I don't think about what I'm building as much when working remote, I'm just building it.
That said, I don't think 100% office is good either. That tends to just burn me out and I know other people I work with say the same thing. I think I'm at my best when it's 2-3 days in the office and the rest working from home.
40 hours in the office is really extreme these days. And any potential benefit of having employees working together in an office 24/7 is going to be negated by their dissatisfaction. Were I working at Twitter I'd probably be looking for a new job after this announcement. Not so much for the remote work decision either, but just the general lack of respect for how the employees prefer to work. This lack of flexibility probably means Musk won't just stop at remote work but he'll want keep track of your productivity, when you arriving in the morning, how long you take for lunch, etc. Working for these kinds of people in my experience is a living hell.