I find the “it’s not fair to service workers” incredibly unconvincing. There’s lots of things that tech workers get that service workers don’t. Better pay, better flexibility with vacations, control over schedules, probably better insurance, the ability to sit all day, etc. The fact that WFH is the line for Musk is because he doesn’t like it. The same for other CEOs. But they know that isn’t an argument anyone will listen to.

A better counter is private jets (and other perks) are not fair to regular employees.

CEOs will cave fast rather than loose their toys.

> treat their employees like they do their customers

So, with disdainful indifference?

I was like w0t, like, have you seen what kind of garbage Musk sells his customers

I’m not going to defend Musk. The sooner he is removed from his companies, the better.

However, the Tesla Cars made in China are excellent.

The Tesla model Y is the biggest selling EV in Australia for a reason.

Also, the Tesla Powerwalls are very good, and anecdotally based on discussions with owners of other home batteries, superior to other battery products.

And Starlink actually seems to be pretty decent! Plenty of people in Australia love their StarLink!

Space X is doing Ok too it seems…

So yes, Musk has become rather odious, but the people in his companies are doing great work IMHO :-)

We won’t mention Twitter….

Pretty much, from all the debate, its clear that the problem isn't the office. It's the commute. I hated going to the office when it was an hour drive away, often worse with traffic incidents. But for the last few years I've lived much closer so it's a quick train trip or bike ride to work and now I much prefer going to the office. It's so obviously better for communicating with people.

There's been plenty of discussion about how the problem is, in many cases, also the office. Right in the discussion on this very article, in fact. [0]

There are many reasons to dislike forced work-in-the-office policies. Not all of these reasons apply to all people, but they all apply to at least some.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39968652

Pulling on the thread of executives blaming WFH for poor productivity, it just points to their lack of adaptability and poor management.

WFH is a global trend and something you cannot fight. People will just go elsewhere.

Executives should indeed highlight there is a problem and fix it accordingly by changing how managers operate. Not by trying to wind back time.

I actually hadn’t heard that excuse yet, but holy shit. It’s like once you’re a CEO you’re back in 3rd grade where everything should be “fair” again, unless it’s YOU getting ahead in which case you’re probably just REALLY talented.

Musk was a terrible employee himself, he always wanted to do things his way. When Musk talks about WFH, it is something personal, you can see his face because he gets emotional.

I believe it is a good thing to meet colleagues from time to time in the same place, but for deep work I need to work alone. No distractions, on my place.

As an adult I can manage myself better than most people can.

Managers do want people in the office to physically lock them: if you are a giant in a certain place most works for you or have to migrate elsewhere and moving homes scare many, it's not easy, family members might have issues moving their jobs together, eventual kids might suffer loosing friends and change schools and so on. People in the office means people more tied to their employers, more keen to accept not-so-nice things at work, not-so-nice changes and so on.

While remote workers can change employers potentially just changing some login screens, witch makes them less keen to accept bad work conditions or bag changes.

Does WFH save employees or companies time?

It's the same time. An employee effectively pays me for what I feel is the "cost" of working there, which is measured in hours lost of my day.

They don't pay me to work 24/7, they pay me to work 8h per day. But of course the cost measured by the employee isn't the time lost working, it's the time lost working or commuting. So someone who used to sell 10 hours of their day to their employer and now sells 8 hours of their day to their employer for the same pay, isn't going to be happy about going back to selling 10 hours.

The fact that we got those 2 hours as an hourly "raise" at the start of the pandemic doesn't change anything. Being forced to go to back to the office is effectively a cut in your hourly rate.

Do you commute to work via teleporter?

Teleporters don’t exist.

Work from home can save employees money on commuting.

Work from home can reduce productivity.

So does WFH save employees or companies money?

WFH can also greatly increase productivity.

Can != does

Exactly.

So, to rewrite your prior message:

WFH does reduce commute time.

WFH can (sometime) reduce productivity.

In our company the _measured_ productivity is higher since we WFH.

Not convinced that productivity can be measured for most SWE work.

It is sort of measurable. How many lines you output, how many bugs are in your code, how much time is spent fixing your bugs. Etc. I mean its far from perfect and leadership roles are harder to measure (but can be measured by how the people under them think about them). But still I get your point.

I think the best we can do is have an expert familiar with the task and codebase evaluate contributions. Trouble is, this can be corrupted by all sorts of internal politicking.

People have been trying to measure productivity for many years. If you found a good method you should publish it.

We still do Agile Scrum, and our velocity has gone up significantly. Experienced team, mature code base, no real external forces to skew these figures.

Goodhart's Law does not apply, as we have done this for many years and are happy [1] with the way we do things.

[1] for some value of happy

Well, WFH can be good or bad depending on how is done, on both sides, worker side and company side. I'm an EU home worker and I have experienced some issues on my sides and many on company sides, that's much a matter of knowledge and willingness to test and improve.

Most managers, at least in EU, can't really get WFH, not just in terms of synchronicity or asynchronicity but in mere practical terms: they simply fail to understand the "job" part vs the "office boilerplate" part. This is an enormous issue that might reduce productivity alone. Most workers fear the change so tend to have poor home office setup and that's as well can lower productivity.

All these phenomenon are not part of WFH paradigm but just part of an evolutionary path we have all to do to understand. It's not much different than the old UK rule to put a horse in front of any train to control their speed. Now, do you prefer to have forever a horse in front of every train or having get rid of them is a good riddance?

WFH can save both employees and companies money IF done properly, similarly working on site can save money and work well or not, it's not a matter of where you work but how much you understand how to work in a certain way or another. The whole society can save money and live far better if the society evolve well, and we still have absurd procedures with pdf forms made not as forms but as to-be-printed, then scanned, than mailed tools, because those who have designed such procedure do not know nor understand the "modern" world (modern quoted since pdf fillable forms, digital signatures, web forms etc are modern, but definitively not new).

Now try to project the cost for a company of:

- eliminating offices, so not rent, cleaning services, electricity, ...

- enlarging they potential employees choice at least at a national level, if not the entire world (witch might be fiscally complicated)

- being able to move their fiscal residence as they want since there is no physical boundary

Does companies save money with such model? DEFINITIVELY YES, at least if they know how to do, and their best interest is trying, learning from errors, correct them and keep evolving instead of bovinely hold untenable positions just because they know them and fear the change.

As an employee I do save money WFH, but to do so I've invested much, I left a big city for mountains, building a new home and so on. I've studied and have done the change. A company can do the same with LESS investments typically.

And money, lots of money. A small house in Silicon Valley costs millions of dollars, but companies demand people work there.

> As for Musk saying "it ain't fair for service employees" I reply those are different jobs. Poor excuse.

Exactly. I had a service job and I didn't mind going into work at all because that's what the job is. And besides, interacting with customers is much preferable to being in a building surrounded by people typing on keyboards when no one actualy needs to be there.

Should we now say that executive jobs are unfair to employees because employees don't get to run the company?

I worked a service job that required going to work for minimum wage and wasn’t happy that my wage didn’t increase when WFH employees got the benefit of WFH during COVID.

A class of workers benefited, but other classes didn’t.

Some professions, such as surgeons, pilots, and actors, demand physical presence due to the nature of their work.

This has nothing to do with worker 'class'.

Those roles are upper class or professional jobs. I’m guessing they had the ability to extract higher compensation or work conditions, compared to others who had to accept the new normal or else.

This really impacts the lower and middle class.

> wasn’t happy that my wage didn’t increase

Did you suddenly start producing more value? If no, then why would your wage increase?

> As for Musk saying "it ain't fair for service employees" I reply those are different jobs. Poor excuse.

Of course it's poor excuse, solidarity amongst workers is something Musk actively fights against, using that as a rallying cry for this is more than a poor excuse, it's blatant weaponisation of empathy against workers themselves.

Fuck that noise.

> Musk, Jasys and Benioff should treat their employees like they do their customers.

Be careful what you ask for :) Remember how Musk treated his advertising customer Disney :)

But yeah I imagine he treats his employees even worse.

With more people working from home, we need less concentration of people living nearby their work. This would decrease housing pricing and allow service workers to live closer to their work.