Remote work has pros and cons--both at an organization level and at an individual level. I think that "both sides" have argued the pros and cons enough that I don't need to repeat them here.<p>It's clear to me that no work situation is ideal for everyone or every group.<p>My "selfish" point of view is that I hope that remote work takes over more and more, and that companies stop forcing workers back into the office full-time.<p>My personal life situation makes remote work almost a requirement if I want to continue being a software developer. I'm divorced with a young son over whom I have 50% custody. I won't move to a "tech hub" city for a job and abdicate my responsibilities as a father. Even my current job is only a 40 minute commute for me by car, and I still only go to the office once or twice per week: the days that I have to drop off or pick my son up from school won't really accommodate a 40 minute commute unless I'm only going to work a 5-6 hour day.<p>I count myself as very fortunate that my current work situation is with wonderful people, who all have families as well, and mostly-remote was part of my initial negotiation.<p>On the flip side of feeling fortunate, I have to remind myself that the company is fortunate, too. Not that I'm not humble, but I do think I'm a pretty good software dev and a generally good employee who takes pride in their work.<p>I guess the point of spilling out my personal life story on the internet is that I hope that companies realize that forcing on-location work is not just a choice between an employee being at home or being in the office; it may be a choice between having a good employee and not having them at all.
It's a pain when someone in my teams meetings is in the office because of all the noise in the background. This makes me laugh because it's clear that there's a lot of distraction going on there.<p>"Communication" can also mean getting distracted or drawn into irrelevant discussion or being continuously interrupted by people wanting something.<p>I think it's quite ridiculous to claim to value personal presence in an age where I'm working with people all day who are in other countries and other offices - even down the hall - and that's all happening by chat and email and teams meetings. I really think it's about the way some people manage lazily by looking to see if you're typing or not instead of looking at results and understanding the work.<p>It's nice to meet people in person once or twice but I don't need to see any of them once a week or once a month.<p>I only manage 3 people but I have to work with a lot of people to get things done and have to understand their personalities and points of view and what they're doing up to a point. I can't come up with a reason why I would want to be able to look over their shoulder.
Vacancy rates for commercial real estate are what 20-30%? While the economy continues to grow, so no this narrative about productivity is pure bs.<p>Every post about how I overhead some conversation, the problem is you not knowing how to manage people. There are field workers, trades, all of India working remotely, always, long before Covid.<p>Had a 4 hour call to fix a bug , 1 on 1, never got distracted, no one butted in, no one asked to go out for lunch, coffee, had some bs made up management emergency that required everyone. No one told me that x,y,z brought apples and they are in the kitchen. My working day has more working hours than it ever did while living in NYC because as everyone knows ~20% of your waking hours are spent commuting.<p>Oh I remembered my all time least favorite activity, where we pile into a room to eat team lunch with plastic utensils off paper plates, while someone from some management organization tells us how we should see the world… yeah no thanks. I wonder why is there is no demand for commercial r/e oh that’s right because unless you are a unicorn company or actually physically need to be at a location to perform a task, the vast majority prefers working from home.
I will say. I'm gonna be burned for this here, but... yeah I can tell that remote is far less effective.<p>As a worker I like it! And there are some positives - mainly, you don't have to commute and live in a cheaper place. But as a manager, I see that it's just so far less effective, and I see how much more we can do it we meet together once in a while. One thing that's good is that it gives you access to a bigger talent pool, and you can pay people less, because they are happy they can work remote.<p>I was originally against hybrid, because it's not really one thing or other thing, but now I start to see its positives too.
I see a huge shift in narrative even in comments around the Internet about return to office. Just saying.<p>I am a manager and manage a team of six people. One of them is in a completely different country. I trust all people in my team to do their job properly and am available to them all the time if needed. It works. Our team is profitable and we do a good job. Client and employee retention is high.<p>Managers requiring return to office and 'butts in seats' have their own issues. Nothing to do with work, communication, performance. That applies to jobs that can actually be done remotely of course.
I really hope Google and other remote-hostile companies lose their prestige as some kind of stamp of excellence that's supposed to signal you're some higher caliber engineer. I never applied to work there because of their absurd interview process (along with other FAANGs) which require candidates to spend months on "interview prep" grinding Leetcode questions - a colossal waste of everyone's time. Even during COVID when all companies were remote I didn't apply because most big corporations tend to require employees to be trapped in their country unless you go through the hassle of transferring offices, and I prefer the freedom to live wherever I want.<p>This banning of remote work is so backwards, and will only contribute to their demise from their former peak. Next thing you know Google will no longer be seen as a "cool" place to work, and face the same fate as many former behemoths like IBM and Yahoo.<p>At this point I wonder who even desires to work at companies like Google except for entry level hires, prestige whores, and old people with families wanting stability.
What I'm seeing looking for remote work at tech companies right now:<p>- startups: MANY (most?) are committed to "remote-first" and talk about this prominently on their careers page<p>- larger companies (~1000+ employees): do seem to be making more noise about being in the office 2 days a week.<p>- really big companies: still ignore my English Major ass so idk
I'm one of those weirdos who hates going in to the office. However, I'd like to provide a counter-point to that fact. My company has offices in Europe and I _love_ going to the office over there. Hate it in America. Love it in Europe. The question I ask myself is why? I don't feel isolated from my family. Its a couple blocks away. Safe and easy to get to. My son whose very young could safely walk there and back without being harmed (intentionally or accidentally). The city is so safe he could take the subway on his own if he wanted to. If I want to go home I can. If I want to go to lunch my family can meet me halfway.<p>The office in Europe _feels_ like an extension of home (in my experience - maybe not true for all). I feel a general sense of ease there. Taking the subway in New York or driving to work in Houston feels like a horrific burden that I'm just not willing to put up with anymore.
I saw a Twitter thread about this that I didn’t want to engage in there, but figure I might get more intelligent discussion here. Basically there’s a motif like “we should allow people to work where they’re most comfortable and productive!”, but what about the folks that are most comfortable and productive in an office surrounded by other folks also working on the same product as them?<p>On one hand I don’t think people who don’t want to work should be forced in, but on the other it seems like a lot of companies are taking this as an opportunity to get rid of offices all together. Just look at recent “who’s hiring’s”: the majority are exclusively remote, leaving folks like me who would prefer to work with others and don’t mind moving no options.
Does anyone else feel like this mostly undermines the entire point of "tech" and "the web"?<p>What the hell is the point of having a hyper connected, super charged by AI world, when ultimately it boils down to having to "go to an office"?<p>I honestly feel like 95% of tech is smoke and mirrors, the people who own "tech" know this so they end up just asking people to come back to work to help them sell advertisements, which seems like the only way we know how to make money from all this "innovation".<p>It's really quite mad.
Google famous for being so particular about having data to justify their decisions, even down to the color of blue in the css.<p>Do they have data to back this move up? Data that suggests that WFH is less effective?<p>Or are they just annoyed that their expenditure on office real estate is being wasted?
Just like everyone got a bunch of ultra low interest mortgages & now will never consider relocating, a bunch of employees got work remote jobs at companies & positions that will be much harder to get again.
Honestly, I got a job last year in a hybrid office and i love it. We are treated like adults. We can step out if we need to. We can remote in an extra day or come in an extra day if we feel like it. I also love my team and hanging out at our desks was something I didn't realize I missed until I had it again.<p>Remote is cool. Full time strict office is blah. Hybrid flex is lovely
Personally I highly prefer the office. I hate the commute but prefer the office. It’s a great conundrum for me.
I guess this is a hot take - but I miss the pre pandemic days when most people were in the office most days.<p>My takeaway from this experience is to bemoan the construction of US society around cars. If we all lived close to the office and or had quicker / easier transport maybe this would be less of a problem.
<i>For those who are remote and who live near a Google office, we hope you’ll consider switching to a hybrid work schedule. Our offices are where you’ll be most connected to Google’s community. Going forward, we’ll consider new remote work requests by exception only.”</i><p>now.. maybe it's just me, but re-reading that sentence makes my eye note "AND WHO LIVE NEAR" as well as CONSIDER SWITCHING as well as EXCEPTION ONLY.<p>Is EXCEPTION ONLY limited? how do we know?<p>what about "how big is LIVE NEAR" as a cohort.<p>The article is a hot take I want to believe too, but legalistic reading says its "doesn't want" in the sense of "want, not is not permitting"<p>nobody is being strongarmed, from whats read above. There's getout clauses a-plenty for any authorised manager to 'exception' their way out of this.<p>Google doesn't want people to leave en mass, or unionise either. Want doesn't drive hard sometimes. The real world intrudes.
Depending on the org, most Google employees are already part of a distributed team. This is nothing but making management appear functional and bean counters that manage the buildings feel like their buildings are being used.<p>Has zero to do with productivity.
The biggest factor for RTO/Hybrid for most, is that they moved to a lower cost area. I was in South Bay - bough a 70 year old just before pandemic - a small house for a lot of money. I found a huge, value for money house, 1.5 hours away from the south bay, for far less and sold off my south bay one.<p>There's no way I'm coming back to south bay and pay more in rent for a small apartment than I pay in mortgage. Even hybrid is a pain with commute totaling 3-4 hours on weekdays
From the article:<p>> The email also reminds [non-remote-designated] employees […] that managers can factor their absences into performance reviews.<p>Requiring on-site vs remote work is one thing; tying it to performance considerations is another. If an employee is performing well against all other standards and isn’t causing collaboration problems, but has absences against the on-site policy, that should prompt a totally different conversation.<p>Overall, that note (plus the fact that it was sent in a company-wide memo - recall how huge Google is) seems like it creates gray areas for incompetent managers. Or, for a way to make any manager’s job easier during layoffs.
I wonder how long it takes to go from “those who live near Google offices” to “all employees”. Once 80-90% of employees are back at work regularly it’s not a stretch to believe that those few people who are always remote will be seen as less effective and less connected to their peers going into the office everyday. This is likely one step of many.
Fully expect most people in the discussion to be pro-remote-work. But does anyone have hard evidence that working from home is as productive as working in the office?
Google seems to have always said this externally, but every time I met with Google pre-COVID, all their engineers dialed in from home. Managers in the office. I would even travel to their office. Engineers? Nope. At home.
Soon many companies will not renew their lease, and there won’t be much office to return to. Those that invested a lot in their office space will try to make the best use of it, but in the long run it’s more profitable to downsize offices.
Selfishly, I love remote work. But I also think I’m not quite as productive or engaged when I’m fully remote. Still pretty productive, but not quite. (Compared to a sane in-person company without copious interruptions)<p>That’s a fine tradeoff for me. I’d much rather get the same salary, work from home, and just be marginally less productive.
I must be a useless worker because I really can't relate to everyone praising the productivity when WFH. My productivity is almost non-existent unless I have a super interesting task.<p>Seriously, I can't be the only one who is just slacking off when working from home.
I live about 1:30 hour from my office. Before covid I went in 2x per week. Since covid I've been to the office about 6 times in 3 years. Never going back to a regular commute. Never. Open floor plan is terrible for thought-work (programming). Having my own home office and regaining several hours per week is priceless. I would gladly take a 50% pay cut if they required me to return to commute.
Reading a lot of the comments, I think I must be an outlier.<p>I've got a nice study at home, with a really good PC setup, rock solid gigabit internet, very nice office chair, all the coffee in the world.<p>But I still really like going into the office as much as possible. I love the cycle in, the coffees with colleagues, being able to just "chat" without scheduling a call, getting lunch out with people.
Is there some kind of standards-document available for what makes an office comfortable? I love the collaboration of office work but I also am extremely uncomfortable with bright light, a lack of good food, and a computer setup dictated by others. It’s not enough of a distraction to want to walk away from the job — the work is great and the engineers are smart — but there’s this general lack of care and attention to detail in my workplace that makes it far inferior to my own home.<p>A set of core values to share with my office manager would be great. Another idea would be to find some kind of training for them in how to turn an impersonal office space into a cared-for home-from-home.<p>Something like Patty McCord’s / Netflix’s employee handbook, but for lighting, desks, colors, and espresso machines. It sounds so ridiculously trivial and entitled, but in business we are always trying to stay ahead of our competitors yet when it comes to the workplace the competition is <i>gorgoiler’s home</i>, which is stiff competition indeed.
It seems just another masked round of layoffs. If the remote worker is important, an exception will be made and nothing will change; if the remote worker is redundant, it's very regrettable that they are unable to adjust to the shifting realities of the workplace.
I'm in a tough spot with this new RTO guidelines (similar ones issues by my company). I live ~2-2.5 hours from my assigned office due to two-body problem. I travel to the office once/twice a week, but thats the max I can do - 3 days per week is impossible. I'm more productive WFH, however I utilize my office time to meet as many people in-person I can. However recently that has reduced to mostly VC time in-office as most of my team are from a different coast altogether. To me, going forward Remote works best, but these blanket rules really doesn't work for all edge cases like mine.
If your entire team is in the office, that can be much more productive than remote work. But how many companies will be able to get even 50% of a team in the same office at once, even if they force everyone to RTO? Companies already moved away from that when they started setting up offices around the world and allowed people to effectively work from anywhere. If 25% of your team is in an office in Belgium, 25% in San Francisco, 25% in Mumbai, 25% remote... is it the 25% remote that is really holding back workplace synergy?
I work remote for a startup.<p>I have a 15 minute walk to my kids' school - not a bad one either, a 30 second walk to the bus stop, a 3 minute walk to the grocery store, a 7 minute walk to the fancy grocery store near the hardware store. My religious group is a 2.5 mile drive/bike. We are approximately one hour from grandparents.<p>I have an old house with a small backyard and gardens, a neighborhood stuffed with kids and a community that values kids. In addition, I can <i>save money</i>.<p>Absolutely none of that is possible for my (quite decent) income in Seattle (closest tech hub).<p>To move me to a par Seattle house with par livability, par neighborhood, and par mortgage cost (but further away from grandparents), would be on the order of a +1M outlay - maybe +750K (but I haven't checked recently). (Wedgewood, Ravenna, or Magnolia neighborhoods, if you're curious).<p>In short: moving to a tech hub would be a radical downgrade to the quality of life.<p>As another posted:<p>> ... There is one side that is unambiguously pro-family, pro-environment, pro-church involvement, pro-bowling league, pro-parents in kids lives, pro-marriage, pro-divorced child raising. ...<p>concur.<p>I would also note, pointedly, that if you're a bigshot in a major tech company in a metro hub, you should be having very serious discussions with the city government about workforce housing for the > 30 set. It is actually possible to have a good metro life - if the city is designed for it.
A workplace is not a community. Google alumni don't get together at barbecues and reminisce about the good of days. They're not raising houses together for Habitat on the weekends. It's unethical dark manipulation all the way down the line.<p>ex-Googlers should class-action sue for emotional damages experienced by losing their only community when they are laid off<p>Let's see how valuable community is, then, for Google when it becomes a liability.
I honestly don't know if I could work another job where I can't work remotely. If circumstances were dire and I just had no choice, I guess I'd bite the bullet, but I would demand a -lot- more money. Even if you live close, it can take up to an hour to get to my office downtown, that's 2 hours a day that I'm sitting in traffic and not getting paid for...it actually costs me time and money. Time that is impossible to get back.<p>I've made countless friends over the years from office work, met one of my best friends working in an office and made a lot of contacts that have helped my career; but I'm not in my 20s anymore, barely clinging to my 30s, the office environment is mostly useless to me now.<p>The main drivers I see behind this is to save commercial real estate investments. Productivity can't be dropping much, if at all, if companies are still making record profits while cutting back on their workforce. I can understand wanting to meet up for a big collaboration, but after that you can go back to remote and then meet up again, that doesn't require a 5-day work week in the office.
Are they going to provide a pay raise for the lost time commuting or do they just expect their employees to take a quality of life hit without recompense?
I'm at least 2x as productive remotely than in the office. Even if commuting didn't waste my time for no reason and I'd like to hang out with people at the office I don't think it would be a good idea.
It seems like the most likely explanation for this is that it's a "soft layoff"; rather than endure the PR and morale hit of a real layoff, let them quit. Plus, even if remote work is not a within-worker disadvantage versus office work, management may nonetheless estimate that people willing to come in to the office are more attached to their jobs.<p>Or as it is said: the purpose of a system is what it does. If the primary effects are likely distributional via who remains a Google employee, then we can infer the goal of the decision.
There are a ton of dueling anecdotes in these comments. Is there any actual data on remote work productivity?<p>To me the dominant fact is that COVID happened and work seemed to continue just fine. This strongly implies to me that remote work is not a major productivity drain. But I realize there are various counterarguments (e.g. it could not have been sustained, because junior employees can't onboard successfully remotely). I don't buy them personally but I only have anecdotes, which is all anyone seems to have.
I did a silly little exercise the other day, pitting my company's official Corporate Values against the non-negotiable RTO policy they forced into effect a couple months ago:<p>Megacorp's recent mandatory return-to-office (RTO) policy, when evaluated against its stated corporate values, raises several potential points of conflict.<p>Integrity: The company's value of integrity may be questioned if the policy is perceived as being imposed without transparency or clear rationale. If the decision-making process was opaque and unaccountable, it could undermine trust and the sense of fairness.<p>Innovation: A mandatory RTO policy could be seen as inconsistent with the value of innovation. Innovation often involves embracing change, adapting to new circumstances, and leveraging new tools and methods – remote work included. Thus, reverting to traditional office work may be seen as regressive.<p>Customer-first mindset: If the RTO policy adversely affects employee morale, productivity or retention, there might be indirect negative impacts on customer service and satisfaction.<p>Entrepreneurial thought and action: Entrepreneurship often entails autonomy, flexibility, and the ability to work independently. A top-down policy mandating return to the office might be seen as limiting these aspects, potentially contradicting this corporate value.<p>Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion: A mandatory RTO policy could disproportionately impact employees who have caregiving responsibilities, health concerns, or other personal circumstances that make remote work more feasible and attractive. This could lead to concerns about inclusivity and equity.<p>Collaboration: While collaboration can indeed be enhanced by in-person interaction, modern digital tools also enable effective remote collaboration. Thus, enforcing a return to the office might be seen as a narrow interpretation of this value.<p>Competitive Spirit: If other companies are offering flexible or remote work arrangements, a mandatory RTO policy might affect Megacorp's ability to attract and retain top talent, impacting its competitiveness.<p>Execution: Depending on the details of the RTO policy, it could potentially disrupt work schedules and productivity, thus affecting the company's capacity for effective execution.
one thing that i feel will come to a head is that there are many reasonable accommodations for wfh (family issues, health, flexibility, a11y) which i support, but that there is a growing resentment and classism associated with wfh.<p>i love that people can wfh 100% and spend time in their _favourite_ place and raise their kids and see their family and do whatever they want, but it's quite possibly the most privileged position to be in globally. i wish that people put as much emphasis on their communities and raising wages and transforming their cities as they do about their absolute hatred of offices.<p>i _support_ wfh, but some of the takes are pretty insufferable. "i want to be there for my kids" yeah so does EVERYONE. most workers cannot do that, must live very far away especially in the bay area, and don't have the resources to have a large enough space to do their job remotely, if they can do so at all. i feel so much sadness and pity for the state of affairs witnessing how privileged tech workers act. feels a lot like urban flight all over again, but this time instead of race, it's just wealth.<p>i don't know how to support both wfh and a reasonable equitable society like that in europe, at least not with 40k FAANG workers demanding that they live their life how they want, when they want, where they want.
3 days on site requires you to live close and will explode even more housing costs, driving lower wage people to leave. I just don’t get why companies and government don’t work out something that would benefit the country as a whole in the longer term.<p>2 days on site would eventually allow for a one night stay in a hotel in the area and focussed 2 days team work.<p>I can say that I will only start looking in my area in the future and evtl earn less, start to consume less as relocating is no option.
... except if the air is bad due to Canadian forest fires (which truly sux right now). NYC today looks like Ottawa a day or two ago. People are cranking up their HEPA filters and digging up masks from 2020/Covid.<p>On the serious side, companies that will trust their staff and let them work as they wish when it's ok for productivity will be the ones that have the best chance to pull in talent and the largest pool to fish in.
Smaller companies and organizations have an incentive of going remote-only or mostly-remote to save on rent.<p>Google owns offices. Similarly, Apple may have not demanded workers' presence in office if they haven't built their huge doughnut in Cupertino.<p>One can only hope that smaller orgs won't brainlessly copycat Google "because it's Google, they're big so they must know what they're doing".
I work remotely for more than 5 years. After my daughter was born, the productivity is a rollercoaster and I needed to modify my working schedule by a lot according her daytime activities. I think, I could provide a more precise output sitting in an office, on the other hand I need to be a very effective and finish the task before she starts to play around me :)
I still don't understand that a company who makes a ton of money from creating tools that fascilitate better remote working is against its own employees doing it.<p>Remote work is here to stay. Sure, colocated work is too, but trying to put the genie back in the bottle _at a tech company_ is surely a losing battle. Or is the total comp at Google really that good?
We're three years into this experiment and still no productivity studies referenced in any of these threads.<p>Anecdotes ARE all our anecdata now.
what is missing from remote work is the casual learning when folks are standing in front of you. i miss those exchanges during remote work.<p>what i do NOT like about working in office is the bloody commute.
as a contractor, the simple fix is to charge much more when traveling.
we charge by the week, not the day nor the hour, for example, discounts
given for monthly stays.
Meanwhile I (amazon) am returning to my local office by myself as the rest of my team is in Seattle or California<p>The next year or three will be weird for office work, but at the end I’m fairly convinced it will look like pre-pandemic (5 days butt in seat, teams colocated, remote is 2nd class citizen)
I'd say age is certainly a factor in this issue. Generation Gap for the 21st century.<p>My Gen X generation would be used to office work but comfortable with modern technology. Although many times for complex subjects when you get into back and force messages "just call me" would enter my brain.<p>Millennial would be similar but grew up with more tech. Voice calls on phones would have been replaced by texts when they were young. Last golden age of TV was over so not much of a draw. I'd guess messaging would be more comfort that for all except the oldest audio voice calls. They be more comfortable working remotely but have certainly experience office life.<p>I'd Gen Z was born into tech never knowing TV and wouldn't care. Face to face in an office wold be alien for some maybe they never even had a job yet. Email would be ancient tech, messaging is basically speech and cryptic at that.<p>Basically I think there is a clash of culture and it depends on your generation how comfortable you are which results in how efficient of a worker you are.
Everyone is talking about commute time and noise issues when it comes to going to the office.<p>No one has mentioned the <i>smell</i>. Some office reek of fear. In other you can smell stress. When it rains and it's hot, there a diffuse sense of sweat from all the people swetting inside the office.<p>Yet in other ones, usually the poorly built ones, there's a strong sense of plastic.
The smell of the building is usually a constant background smell. Brick and mortar buildings smell much better than a glassy skyscraper with constant climatization.<p>Is no one bothered by that?
Usually home, or the local park, smell much better. I prefer to work in public parks rather than office.for exactly that reason.
Undoubtedly there are certain roles that require on-site physical presence.<p>I doubt that's the case for most roles at Google.<p>"Our offices are where you’ll be most connected to Google’s community."<p>Why and how?<p>So you move away from your parents house and you stop being connected to them?
In the long run, I look forward to people and companies sorting themselves to their respective camps of "remote" vs "non-remote". Economics will prove which one works better.
What I don't get in all this is the at the beginning of the pandemic, HR, management etc made it very <i>very</i> clear that this was all a temporary situation and remote work would be allowed (enforced) for the short duration of the pandemic and then everybody would be expected to return to the office. I'm sure everyone was given a letter to that effect by HR. What is now going on with this "surprised Pikachu face" where everybody thinks that they can just stay remote for all time? It's ridiculous.<p>If you decided to sell your house or give up your rental in a good (perhaps expensive) location in the city near your place of work for a "better life" outside the city in new accommodation, well under the knowledge that after the pandemic offices might very well return to work and are now complaining about things like commute and quality of life is frankly laughable. You took a hell of a risk doing that and it's now not paying off.<p>The thing about being in an office is it's not about <i>you</i>, it's not about what <i>you</i> want and how <i>your</i> life is better being away from the office. It's about what <i>you bring to everybody else</i>, what you bring to a team of people more junior than yourself and what you can do to help other people. It's extremely hard to find new talent in a junior team working remotely - in fact I'd say it's almost impossible.<p>Pulling up the ladder behind you now that you've got yours and a comfortable life outside the office is frankly selfish. I can see that managers often get the blame here with comments like "they just need people to manage in the same building" I think that's very unfair because actually what they are trying to do is to manage a team of all skill levels and seniorities and by having a remote, or even semi remote, workforce that job is made much more difficult. Covid started about 3 years ago so anyone with less than 3 years of professional experience has probably never ever seen a real working office, just remember that.
Does anyone besides FAAM-sized entities care what Google thinks or does?<p>There is a very real reason disruption matters. Can Google be disrupted? Absolutely. However, will they? I believe so. But not by playing by the same rules.
It's actually to their benefit to allow fully remote because if you force me to live in the bay area you need to pay me 30%+ more to pay the bank for my mortgage or my landlord.
I don’t get the vehemence on these threads. If you don’t like it, work for someone else. There is and always has been massive diversity in tech work arrangements. I’ve met engineers who have been remote-only since the 80s. Most large companies will relax their policies if you’re a good producer or have a trusting manager, long before Covid. And when I look at job openings, the vast majority still list “remote” for engineers and technical roles.<p>It’s painful to see the most entitled industry in the world angry that they have to switch companies sometimes…
This is a good thing. It will force some to venture out on their own where they will learn to stand on their own two feet. Or it will hold employees accountable to the shareholders (owners of the company) to provide a collaborative, in-person, company culture which ultimately enhances productivity and efficiency.<p>In short, Grow Up!
(a message from a tech worker who has rarely worked from home and has reaped the benefits of in office work throughout the pandemic)
if companies want people back in the office they should be required to start compensating for commutes. travel time, gas / electric for vehicles, etc. I sincerely do not give a damn about "productivity" or any other corporate BS from management when they can't even put their money where their mouth is
Could it be that all these complainers about going back to work don't want to lose out on their 2nd job?<p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/over-two-thirds-us-remote-workers-two-or-more-jobs-2021-11?op=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.businessinsider.com/over-two-thirds-us-remote-wo...</a>
well of course they don't want you to work from home, they want to be able to look over your shoulder, making sure you don't leak any secrets ;)
This whole thing reminds me of that letter that gets passed around from time to time online written by one Jourdon Anderson to his former white male American slaver Colonel P. H. Anderson.<p>I had to look it up to find the postscript which I think is very precient today:<p>"P.S.— Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me."
The compromise is simple but nobody wants to say it, only single people who live alone should be allowed to work from home.<p>People with kids or spouses, or those with roommates, should not be allowed to work from home because many in that situation (I’ve learned) do very little work and others have to take up the slack.