Many of us SWEs believe the same!
Most software engineers find themselves most effective in work from home. This breaks in favor at 3:4 or higher.
The software engineers that want to work in office are the odd-balls.
I am interested in the break down when one factors in whatever concept of '10x developers' -- which do the most productive of us prefer?
> the generality; the common herd
GP was countering the possibility that GGP meant the above.
But on that day all of those people might've chosen to work from home so you sit all alone in the office.
The hybrid solution only really works well if the office days are the same for everyone.
If the staff actually find this face-to-face time valuable, they'll organize and go into the office themselves, personally I've had zero requests from anyone to do that outside of explicit team-building activities.
My enthusiasm for RTO is not about changing the venue from which we take our Zoom calls, but about changing our relationship with Zoom to something like its pre-pandemic state. To have some conversations naturally again. But there's no getting around that the WFHers would have to either show up or be excluded from them.
I personally find Zoom excruciating, and I blame the transition to remote meetings for all communication for turning a once optimistic and joyful career experience into a miserable slog.
We used to have so that every Thursday was "come to the office if you can" -day, but switched to the poll system.
But when compared to the modern nearly-universal open office plan... yeah there's no doubt I'd much rather work from home as often as possible, and based on my experience in both environments I'll be far more productive doing the job from home. Everyone's mileage may vary.
Indeed. Give me a proper office with a door, like I had for the first 18 years of my career, and I'll happily go to the office every day.
But open office? Nope, nope, nope. Work from home or nothing.
We have a remote of you want policy and the only two guys who use it also live in the nieghboring towns.
I also claim that I'm more productive but it's obviously a lie in order to continue WFH.
For my first few years of WFH, my office was my bedroom, so I just threw a KVM between my home PC and the work laptop and shared monitors and input devices. I eventually set up a standalone office.
I haven't observed any advantages to an office beyond overexposing the company to real estate (not really an advantage) - there is nothing I could do in person that I haven't been able to do faster in MS Teams (and better - now I have a written record and recording of everything). Another advantage of remote is that nobody ruins my train of thought by tapping me on the shoulder and asking stupid questions like "hey did you get that email." Best of all, no stupid pressure to go to lunch with anyone
Of course teams work better in person. So many factors that impact that though.
However, in my experience that is maybe 30-90% of software engineering, depending on environment, role and seniority. There are lots of relevant activities that are more challenging remotely, such as 1-on-1 mentoring, pairing for debugging or programming, or designing and collaborating a project or interface across-teams. Maybe you are "lucky" enough to never have to bother with that.
I find these quite easy or even better remote. I just fire up a screen share or even better a Visual Studio Live Share and both of us can see the same thing while we have our own developer environment.
Delivery works great remotely, probably better for me and many.
If you adopt a written RFC based slower decision making where people have time to fully articulate their thoughts and have time to respond to those comments then it not worst, just different.
If the house is burning and we need to come up with a solution now the first works way better. There is a reason why the military have war rooms. But for long term changes the second can be as good if not better.
I also know other teams in our organization in the same boat. Sooner or later leadership is going to realize it and the gravy train will end.
It is a strawman argument to claim that people who want to go to the office have no social life. It is in fact easier to claim that "only antisocial people want to hide at home like a hermit with their webcam shut off."
I've seen too many buy into that just to lose their entire social lives over a job change, and also have horrible life satisfaction over the long term.
So yes and no. Depends on how you define work.
I think the more common issue would be lack of collaboration and ties to the company and colleagues when working fully remote.
Working full remote - everyone at home, communicating via slack and zoom, working hours roughly the same.
Vs 9-6 ish hours, some flexibility, where they all come into an office. That office is a small, modern, comfortable office in a workspace. The office has a closed door, and only the team are allowed in the office. The team chat amongst themselves as needed during the day. They take breaks alone or in small groups outside of the office in the kitchen space or on the sofas in the workspace. They chat with folks from other companies. But no one from outside the team ever enters the inner office. It’s their space.
Do you think remote will be more productive for the team as a whole? Do you think the startup will do better with the small office or the remote scenario?
You can add an hour extra at the computer for remote (saved from commuting), but you’ll need to surrender quite a bit of that to interruptions when remote - realistically, delivery men (in the office scenario, deliveries go to a reception), families or pets, a bit of domestic chores, making lunch alone where no work discussions take place.
And I find it very hard to believe. When I started working in the 1980s, everybody got a cubicle, we didn't even like cubicles!, but you had walls and it was quieter and people treated it like your personal space.
In my last job, I could've stood up and put my hand on seven different people's shoulders without moving my feet.
So your quiet shielded office doesn't sound like anything an actual company does.
> you’ll need to surrender quite a bit of that to interruptions when remote -
No, you get a lot fewer interruptions when working remotely than in an office. Deliveries do not take an hour a day, particularly when there are two adults who can split the task.
Pet interruptions take basically zero time per day because they aren't actually an interruption: I don't have to stop thinking about my problem for one second, but if I have to answer a single question about some other technical thing, I blow away my whole thought process and have to build it up again.
- no deliveries (i only order to a dropoff or buy in person)
- no pets
- able to exercise and clear my mind during small breaks
- able to have a homecooked meal or go to my favourite places for lunch
- __not__ talking about work on breaks is actually a huge plus for me
I want a private space where I can close the door and have minimal visual and auditory disruptions. It does not have to be large, enough space for my monitors + chair. If I need to talk to someone else, we can do it in a different location.
A small company is then going to have to lose the flexibility of hiring from anywhere in the country and have to compete for local talent. On top of that, one competitive advantage could be over larger better paying companies (especially now that hopefully most people have wises up enough to know that “equity” in a private company is statistically meaningless)
> The office has a closed door, and only the team are allowed in the office. The team chat amongst themselves as needed during the day.
That doesn’t alleviate the chief complaint about in office work - loud open offices - if I still have to listen to other people talk while I’m doing deep work.
Especially since right now that lack of leverage was literally manufactured on purpose by the fed.
As was the leverage. They artificially drove the economy in the other direction in an unsustainable manner for a number of years before that.
To a certain extent, as an employee I'm happy to trade off some 'democracy' for more money in that package.
As an employer, I would be happy to give people more 'democracy' if that's cheaper to provide than more money.
Do you not hear yourself? For the average American, your employer has more control over your individual liberty than your government and we look at like that’s somehow a good thing. Like sure, if you land a cushy office job then you can forget the abuses the rest of the job market has to suffer. The railroad strike that happened this year was fought over fucking sick days and the government almost stepped in to force the workers to accept whatever their owners gave them.
I don't want my working life to be governed by what a bunch of other people vote for. I get plenty of that from the real government.
I'd rather have strong and competent management that can make credible commitments. And the mechanism to get there is not ballot boxes, but my ability to walk away from any workplace I don't like. The ability to vote with my feet.
Just like I don't want to eat at a burger place where the other customers get to vote. I just want to be able to eat at Burger King, if I don't like what McDonald's has to offer.
Worker cooperatives are already legal in most countries. Including worker cooperatives that are run on whatever theory of democracy you prefer.
Class A office space outside of super expensive cities runs about $35/sqft on average. Employees need about 175 square feet each. So every employee is $6125 more expensive -- but that's only assuming you're renting someplace turnkey, which you probably aren't, so even if you cheap out at an additional $100/sqft ($17,500 per employee) for a custom build-out (one-time cost, but still).
Where is all this money coming from? If your business is perfectly functional remote, with capital costs being what they are, why would you do this?
In London, the cost per employee I’ve used is £15k pa. That includes office space and maintenance, taxes, plus IT costs, entertainment, HR, etc.
The cost for fully remote employees is £9k pa. That is, the cost of the office is £6K per employee.
There are additional costs for remote employees, like remote support. But these balance against not having to buy office furniture, pay for cleaning, etc.
I'm really surprised by such high figure. How was this clalculated?
* Laptop
* Accounts like email, Slack
* Entertainment (e.g. Christmas party)
* HR (this covered specific HR services like payroll, not the whole thing)
* IT support
* Travel expenses
* Home working budget
* Training
The £9K figure _doesn't_ include taxes on individuals, such as NI and pension contributions. That comes from a different budget, and is typically an extra 25% on top of salary.
Employer NI contributions are ~1/2 that. What other taxes do employers inccur?
I really can't see it being worth it in massive, overpriced cities.
If you only hire within the pool of people who are willing and able to commute to your office, you'll both need to pay more and have less choice. Workers are more tired as they spend hours commuting every day.
On the other hand, it's harder to develop juniors if all your seniors are working from home. Written communication lacks context that helps difficult conversations move forward. Silos build up as people in different teams never see each other.
In the long-term, I believe the broader benefits to society and the planet mean fully remote working will become almost universal. In the meantime, a hybrid model of mostly remote with broadly-attended meetups is the best combination. But some companies will decide that everybody being in the office all the time is right for them, and they can perhaps leverage some benefits of doing so.
How often do you feel is enough?
Assuming the "typical" company made up mostly of people who've been there for more than a year, and where commuting is easy, maybe every 3 months is enough. New teams (even within such a company) should aim to meet weekly while they're in the forming stage. Small companies made up of very experienced ICs perhaps never need to meet at all.
I guess the best way of working it out is to ask people, and review what works.
/s
If the place feels dingy or like the owners don't care to make it look nice, I doubt it has a positive effect on productivity and employee retention.
I wouldn't really care, I have never felt inspired by something on the walls. But I would legitimately laugh and feel better every day if the old companies name was still on the wall.
As CEO now is your opportunity to rethink remote work. You may decide you want to continue as is, or you may want to make changes. You have an opportunity to act.
Not that returning to the office will necessarily result in better results, but many CEOs will tend to believe that things will go better with everyone back in the office.