I think they want it because they fear productivity losses that mean lower profits, and ultimately lead to the threat of becoming uncompetitive.
If you agree with that, is your position that these fears are irrational (because in your view, no such productivity loss would occur)?
Both effects depend greatly on whether most other employers in the industry agree amongst themselves on whether to allow WFH: If everyone allows WFH, or everyone forbids it, there's no incentive to change employers, so these are stable equilibria, all other things being equal. Employers prefer the no-WFH equilibrium since (they believe) that leaves productivity highest.
Bosses want rto because they can’t stand paying rent for empty space.
So for those large companies, the sunken cost is larger.
There are benefits to in office work. I don’t consider them valuable enough to offset the cost of 10hrs of uncompensated time every week or doubling my mortgage cost. I hope tax codes will incentivize allowing remote work options given the reduced burden to transportation infrastructure.
This is unlikely. Notice the parent post said:
>> I don't care about company KPI or efficiency, I care about my own well-being first and foremost […]
So you have a situation where:
- Most of your employees think of your company's success and their lifestyle as competing interests.
- Most of your employees are focused on optimizing their lifestyle rather than the quality of their work.
Essentially these are people who don't actually want to work and would be just as happy or happier on UBI.
Now if you have another company whose employees believe in the company's mission, prioritize company success, don't see a necessary trade-off between work and lifestyle, and enjoy working with their teams in person, the latter company will outcompete the former.
I recall one of my German managers said: "The difference between workers today and the previous generation is that we lived to work, while they work to live."
> Most of your employees think of your company's success and their lifestyle as competing interests.
There are only so many hours in the day.
Exactly. If you don't want to work, or don't care about your work, that's fine. There are other people who care and want to work, and care about their colleagues, and they'll show up or the company will go bust.
> Why would you do that?
Everyone has to figure that out for themselves. It's the same as asking "why do I work here?"
You have people who care about their colleagues, care about the product, want to work, often crunch voluntarily, the company makes a profit, and they still get laid off. That is .. well, it's sustainable in that you can always find more fresh grads willing to work in games, at the expense of leaving a trail of burned out and disgruntled former employees behind you, but it's also driving unionization.
This is a nice image you've painted but this company doesn't exist except in the minds of some CEOs and startup founders.
You know what actually happens? A CEO announces RTO, people are outraged, everybody is looking at their options, those who manage to do it switch jobs immediately, those who can't do it at the next opportunity, the ones who are left are a combination of extroverts who finally can have endless interactions with those who want them and those who don't, and a bunch of disgruntled employees who don't give a fuck about your company because of the way you treated them.
I'm sorry you've had bad experiences. I hope you'll heal and be okay or find work that makes you feel appreciated and rewards you.
I remember being stealth fired simply because I was never in the office and those who were assumed "he doesn't really work here anyway". Out of sight out of mind, and Zoom couldn't fix that. Colleagues just forgot about me despite the Zoom calls.
No, actually I haven't. I just have many colleagues who share their feelings with me. In my niche, all best-paid positions are remote only, I basically cooperate with teams from different continents, it's very rewarding. If someone tried to offer me a job forcing me to sit in an open plan office, I would laugh in their face, it seems so ridiculously absurd and unnecessary. The possibility of WFH (for those who want it) is one of the best that happened to the working class since 5-day workweek.
Economy will be the one that will determines the ultimate outcome, especially for tech companies, as they compete globally
Ah. Well, second hand anecdotes are certainly appreciated. Thanks for sharing.
> The possibility of WFH (for those who want it) is one of the best that happened to the working class since 5-day workweek.
Does "working class" have a different meaning today? When I entered the job market it meant "blue collar" or manual labourer. You seem to be indicating that you're what used to be called "knowledge worker"?
Nonetheless I agree with what you and others have said: wfh is great for optimizing an individual's lifestyle. Such a person, focused on their lifestyle, would probably do just as well if they were paid not to work.
As a business owner however, the question is: what is best for the business?
I would guess having employees that feel valued for their productivity and contributions would be what is best for the business, no?
It depends. I think what's best for a business is having employees who want to win and want the business to win, as a primary goal.
It's not really easy to make an adult feel valued because individuals have very different motivations and personalities, so good feelings as a goal is a shifting target.
Of course, if it were easy to answer the question, probably the Harvard Business Review would be a single article and not many decades of publication, and the debate about WFH wouldn't even exist because everyone would feel valued already and the problem would be moot.
I see. Thanks for that clarification. Most of the people I've worked with earn money by running fleets of servers and software that do the work that generates income. It feels weird calling them "working class."
If they're owning the servers and/or software, that's a capital asset. That puts them in the "petit bourgeois" category, like small shopkeepers.
If they don't own the capital assets they're economically dependent on, that roughly corresponds to sharecropping. We've had a few stories on here of what happens when the landlord decides to obliterate such businesses by changing the terms.
Got it. Thanks! :-)
It is very simple: you need best people. In tech industry, people are smart, they know how to optimize things, and they rarely believe in "company values" bullshit. You can choose from a limited talent pool. If you give yourself and them a choice, including the WFH option, you statistically increase your chances of finding the best people. (Also the ones "prioritizing company interest", provided such people exist at all.)
Also, if your company is in a remote area or is in a very specific niche, you basically might not even have that much choice.
Would that it were so simple! But are you saying this from your experience hiring for teams that execute well?
> you statistically increase your chances of finding the best people
Do you have statistics proving this? Please share data.
> they rarely believe in "company values" bullshit
Are you honestly saying that in all the interviews you've attended, you never ask and you've never been asked "why do you want to work here?" And if the question was asked the answer had nothing to do with the company's mission? That's amazing.
I oversimplified it not to stray away from the main topic but actually they need to have very specific features like the willingness to collaborate, the ability to communicate when the time is right, being technically proficient and so on.
> Do you have statistics proving this? Please share data.
Let A be the set of people who like to work remotely and B the set of people who love to do hybrid. (I leave out the set of people who love full RTO because I haven't yet met such a person, even hard-core office lovers admit a day of remote work is doing wonders to them.) Let A1 be the subset of people who would be fit for the job from the set A, and B1 be the subset of people who would be fit for the job from the set B. From the basic properties of real numbers one can infer that A1 + B1 is at least equal to B1.
> Are you honestly saying that in all the interviews you've attended, you never ask and you've never been asked "why do you want to work here?" And if the question was asked the answer had nothing to do with the company's mission?
Actually, they rarely ask it these days. Maybe the hiring folks are tired of this meaningless ritual? I once said I applied by mistake and they still wanted to hire me (I declined the offer as it was a different time zone, I realized this too far in the recruitment process and was quite embarrassed by mistake.)
This is a deeply frustrating response. I asked if you have any data to back up your claims. Recall "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
Instead you give me the kind of thing that people who don't study mathematics think a mathematical proof looks like.
It's certainly not real world empirical data. Your response is worse than useless in this context.
What's even more frustrating is that your "proof" clearly shows that you only recently learnt about real numbers. (Why would you use real numbers for a countable set? Why would real numbers be a useful way of counting discrete humans? How many real numbers are there between any 2 real numbers?)
So you've just learnt about real numbers and you're probably a teenager. Then why are you saying random things to strangers on the internet and pretending to know what you're talking about?
This makes me so sad.
There are a very limited quantity of perfect employees, and you are unlikely to ever have the opportunity to hire one. The vast majority of employees have a mixture of good qualities (e.g., being hardworking) and bad qualities (e.g., expecting a higher salary). Your best strategy is to prioritize those characteristics that are most important to the role you are hiring for and be flexible on characteristics that are less important.
If you get your priorities out of order, even if inadvertently (e.g., by asking unverifiable interview questions that select for better liars), you will make suboptimal decisions.
No offense, are you being for real? Do you think a single employee gives even the faintest of a fuck about the company's mission?
Everyone bullshits it. We all know, and understand, that when you're asked questions like that you say what people want to hear.
People work for exactly one thing, money. The trick is making the money in the least expensive way - expenses being time, energy, and health. It's all fun going to an office 5 days a week until you're old, fat, and your smoking habit has caught up to you. And now what? You die feeling like you did the last 30 years of your life: shit.
Who will remember you? I won't. Your coworkers won't. The company as a whole won't. And what did you gain?
Everything in life is a game of cost analysis. If you're not prioritizing yourself and your own cost analysis, you're a sucker. There're people making more money than you, who are MUCH happier, who work less, and are healthier. Do you want to continue a life of jealousy and self-hatred? Or, will you demand better for yourself? Ultimately, nobody else cares, so you don't have to bother answering. This is just food for thought.
You sound very young or very jaded. That's unfortunate.
As for "Everyone does X", I'll remind you of the saying that "A thief always thinks everyone is trying to steal from him."
You wrote a long ass reply just to express your miserabalist nihilist world view. When you find yourself doing that online or in real life, just get therapy because while it might seem normal and sane to you, it's an unhinged and unhealthy state of mind. :-(
P.s. If you have time for a break, do watch Jiro Dreams of Sushi or The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness for insights on how others found meaning in the work they do daily.
I don't care about work because I'm not pathetic. Ultimately when you inevitably die you won't remember meetings, or cubicles, or water cooler talk. And that's really the big idea. Who do you want to be? What do you want to spend your care on? And, who will care? I can tell you right now - not a single person in your life who matters gives a single fuck about what you do at work. So WHO are you performing for?
And, to be clear, everyone does bullshit it at work. I have genuine interactions constantly when I'm out. Never at work. It's corporate America, everything is at least a little off, a little filtered. I'm not the first one to make the observation. To me, it's obvious, so if you're not seeing it, you might be socially deficient.
I honestly don't know who you're trying to convince. The lady doth protest overmuch me thinks. Perhaps you're hoping I'll collapse under the sheer weight of your tedious prose and say, actually, you're right, my work 'tis sound and fury signifying nothing after all, you're so right?
> Ultimately when you inevitably die you won't remember meetings, or cubicles, or water cooler talk. And that's really the big idea.
That's actually a small and pathetic idea because, unless you've made a groundbreaking discovery in neuroscience, I'm sure no one remembers anything after they die. People who mistake useless ideas for profound insights definitely need therapy. That's called delusion.
> Who do you want to be?
I want to be someone who does great work.
> What do you want to spend your care on? And, who will care? I can tell you right now - not a single person in your life who matters gives a single fuck about what you do at work.
I'm genuinely sorry no one in your life cares about what you spend most of your week doing. That's really tragic.
But even if I were in your shoes and no one cared, that's irrelevant. I care! and in the calculus of existence, my opinion of myself is what matters.
> So WHO are you performing for?
It's actually you who is performing, or rather affecting, a rather tired brand of cynicism. Incidentally, cynical people tend to perform worse than average in cognitive tests so …
But seriously, your talking to a man who was trained by Opus Dei. We believe that any work whatsoever is a sacrament which we offer to God, and so that imbues even the most trivial janitorial work (which I have done in the past) with deep significance. And that's even before I go on a long spiel about how I love my work and what I'm doing is literally what I dreamt of doing as a boy.
But good luck to you, friend. To each his own. It's your life, you're living, not mine. I wish you well.
> I want to be someone who does great work
You can be that, but you'll have to live with the reality that nobody cares.
I want to be a great husband, a reliable friend, somebody funny, somebody people want to be around. I think people care about that. I know nobody I care about cares about my PRs.
> I'm genuinely sorry no one in your life cares about what you spend most of your week doing. That's really tragic.
Nobody in your life cares either, you've just convinced yourself they do so that you can cope with your circumstances and mindset.
If you leave your job tomorrow, the world will keep spinning. Your coworkers will move on remarkably quickly. In fact, if you dropped dead right now, they wouldn't even stop working.
> I care! and in the calculus of existence, my opinion of myself is what matters
Right, I'm addressing your mindset. The fact you care is the problem, not the solution. It's a recipe for misery.
Because your influence on your work is inherently extremely limited. You are a small fraction of the big picture, virtually negligible and worthless. If you attach an emotional string to your work, you WILL face the failures of others.
Is this what you want? Do you want your pride to be in the hands of hundreds, maybe thousands of people you don't care about and who also don't care about you? Because, when people say they care most about work, this is what they're saying.
For me, I'm in such a position where if the company goes under tomorrow, I won't waste my breath. And... for you? Will you cry yourself to sleep? What will come of your ego and image? If that's all you are, then you are not much.
> a rather tired brand of cynicism
Yes, advocating community and a love for life is "cynical"
What is actually cynical is believing your work is your self-worth.
> We believe that any work whatsoever is a sacrament which we offer to God, and so that imbues even the most trivial janitorial work (which I have done in the past) with deep significance
And I actually agree with this!
Your mistake is equating a JOB to WORK in general.
WORK includes emotional work, social work, chores, the mundane, and hobbies.
Your job is the least important work you do. It has the least impact on the world. Many people's jobs actually have a negative impact, because their company performs evil. Certainly, I wouldn't want to be working at Bayer Pharmaceutical when they gave thousands of people HIV.
You want to do work that's meaningful? Go make a cup of coffee for your wife or husband. Observe how that makes them feel and how it makes you feel.
If you stopped "working" tomorrow and had no means to generate income e.g. from ownership of capital you're working class.
So if you make bread, car wheels or SaaS for a living it doesn't matter, only whether you own the output and can sell it. Social class is a distraction from this economic reality.
It’s always had multiple meanings depending on context. Working vs capital class, wealth/income-based, job-based.
Being British, class here is tied strongly to your birth. My dad rents out multiple properties, I earn a good living as a software engineer. However we’re both working class because we were born working class. No amount of money can buy our way into the upper echelons of society because our accent will shut those doors.
I know 2 Boomers who have 8 figure networths and own their own businesses(manual work, think maintenance and installing stuff). They frequently take the opportunity to self congratulate("I worked so hard for 30 years") and complain about younger people("They don't work hard at all, always on their phone during their shift").
Can't say I was surprised when I found out that back when they started their businesses these fields were basically completely unregulated, that the regulations for these areas were in part lobbied by them(and by others like them) once they got off the ground and that both were sitting on juicy government contracts because the guy in charge of the finance department of the canton was in their unit during obligatory military service. And that's just the stuff I am aware of.
The point being: Older people really did live to work, but they never mention that their marginal rewards for extra work were much greater in most areas of the economy as compared to today.
Yes, times change and each generation has to figure out how to succeed in their own unique epoch. I agree.
As one of “these people”, I enjoy my job, but I can recognize the fact that it’s just a job. I’m amazed that you would classify people that don’t center their whole life around their job as people that would be just as happy without a job.
I have a lot of other hobbies. I definitely would not be happier if you just took one of them away and gave me money instead.
There's an old saying that "you become what you do". It's fine if your employment is "just a job" for you and you have hobbies you prefer.
But don't be amazed that there are people who define themselves by their careers as much as others define themselves by their hobbies. That's who you're competing with.
I personally have not seen that workaholic employees get consistent preference in workplaces. Often they get shafted the hardest, particularly in highly competitive workplaces (where, for example, supervisors may undermine their best employees who might threaten their own ambitions).
And the hardest workers are also prone to burnout, which often leads to catastrophic career failures: quitting suddenly with no backup plan, changing careers, having a breakdown and ending up nonfunctional for months at a time.
I have worked in a variety of workplaces, some that were circling the toilet, some that were leading their industries and nonetheless still shooting higher, and some that thought/hoped they were the latter but just didn't have what it takes.
The most consistently successful companies I've worked for have their employees work like tortoises, not hares. They want us to work hard, but sustainably. They discourage all that hypercompetitive nonsense that rewards backstabbers over hard workers, and they encourage us to have a life outside of work to keep us sane. They do this not out of the kindness of their hearts, but because they are insatiably greedy and focused: they want our next 20+ years of productivity and experience.
At this point we're all just speculating wildly from subjective biased anecdotes.
Data is required.
This works as an argument against 8h work day and 5-day work week too.
Ultimately if something is better for the society (and WFH obviously is - commute time, carbon footprint, land prices, housing crisis - it helps with almost everything) - we should just force companies to use it by regulation, so that there's no "race" in that regard cause the conditions are the same for everybody.
The exact regulation is tricky, but sth in the spirit of "if your job can be WFH you should have an option of WFH" is a good starting point.
Isn't that what we want? Land prices averaging out? Then we can build where it's cheaper so more people have homes (with access to good jobs).
It probably won't be limited to suburbs, if you can WFH from the same state - you can WFH from another state.
I expect many companies will arrive at an equilibrium with at least 2 days WFH for focused work and 3 days in-office for collaboration. This seems to already be happening since the % of companies offering hybrid is up this year. The question is how many great employees laggard companies will lose before accepting that.
(Caveat: this does not apply to companies doing mostly ground-breaking work that have more mission-focused, highly qualified applicants than they can handle. Some companies may be surprised to find they are no longer in this bucket.)
Currently the hard-RTO companies in the news are clearly doing it for silent layoffs reasons as there are simultaneous leaks of 5-figure attrition targets.
Maybe a strong FTC/DOJ stance on antitrust, plus the top-down mandates will lead to more small company innovation as well.
The companies that make lots of money then end up being softer & more extravagant with their employee (ahem, GOOG and a lot of Mag7/FAANG) until some equilibrium point where they're so soft they lose their edge.
Then a new up&comer rises and the cycle repeats.
Probably it makes sense to start with disabled people. There are not a lot of them, so potential negatives wouldn't hurt society that much and helping disabled people generally is well received. So basically if disabled person want to work in a job that could be done remotely and qualified for it, you must allow remote work, or something like that. Then you can follow with people caring for kids or disabled elders, they often must be at home, but at the same time they might have enough time to allow for some work. With enough statistics smart people could make an informed decision, whether forcing WFH worth it or not.
You better be good then or have a niche/rare skillset. There's no intrinsic right to remote work. Things will mostly revert to pre-covid, where only the best/most disciplined/highest performers are given the freedom to WFH. Sure, some companies will be 'remote first', but for the most part, you'll need to be a special hire with an exemption carved out. I'm already seeing this in my workplace. Managers are begging leadership for remote headcount but getting Bay area headcount instead. The teams getting remote headcount are the hardest to fill/most in demand skillsets, and almost always very senior.
This is a double edged sword. You don’t care about the company, you care for yourself. Your company sees that and gives you a certain treatment. If you don’t care just quit?