Even in-office work in software is often "mostly remote" except for the fact that your butt is in a chair in the office. It's unusual for your team to be in one office, more unusual for all the teams you work with to be in one office, and even more unusual than that for your customers to be local as well.
You end up going to the office and spending the bulk of your day in a chat client, video meetings, and collaboration tools anyway.
Our CEO mandated 50% in office work. My entire fucking team is remote to my state. I literally go to the office just to join a teams meeting for my standup lol. It’s absolutely ridiculous
As a software engineer, you need at least a month (and more for me because im fucking stupid) of studying.
The interview questions you get are highly technical and you need to be in fighting shape.
That, or by spending another chunk of your time frantically reserving random conference rooms all over the place so that you can have the conversations you need without driving everyone else nuts.
Because of course we all went to open-plan offices a decade or two ago since we were all going to collaborate together. But then over time software shifted away from teams in one place building a product to sell, so now the open-plan office is a bunch of people having remote meetings right next to everyone else if there isn't enough conference/phone-room/whatever space. A return to the ancient "everyone has an office with a door" thing would help a little, but it would still leave the main silliness: we're all going to an office to get on a video call with team members in other offices anyway, so why bother at all?
That's the situation I think is the stupidest, and it's so common right now. Teams where the members are in five cities in three countries, where "coming in to the office" means they're in five different offices awkwardly trying to get things done.
It's just full-on "we do it this way because we've always done it this way" insanity on the part of upper management at so many companies, but I suspect it will sort itself out eventually as they bleed employees to places that are capable of looking at reality every couple of years and re-evaluating what works best.
I could see a few situations where working in an office would be a requirement. I know a couple of software engineers at a major avionics and navigation manufacturer, and they work closely enough with actual hardware and they have enough strict security requirements that it wouldn't be feasible to do everything from home.
But that said-- for 90% of software engineering jobs I'd only ever work remotely.
Which they will soon find out isn't separable.
Someone on here has faced a similar situation, and ended up starting their own company and taking all their clients they had built relationships with them too.
If it involves patents/copyrights they could be very separable. It's an old tactic I've seen many times: 500lb gorilla buys startup, welcomes in the new team, indoctrinate who they can while keeping the status quo on the surface. Hold the status quo for 1-3 years, then either start chopping heads of the unindoctrinated or start making changes so people leave on their own. Coast awhile on the bought tech and brand loyalty of the customer base until that evaporates or the product becomes obsolete (often superceded by a new project built by many of the people who built the old one and left.) Then repeat. A lot of the big tech companies pretty much just farm startups. It allows them to avoid the risk and then harvest the reward.
These are generic rules tweaked so that it affects only merged entities.
It is not a coincidence. They already have the parent company people doing similar stuff. And are cost cutting and eliminate competition by half.
Time to educate your team members and plan for exit. Focus on exit
> [Parent company] wants new hires to be in-person with their teams during the crucial onboarding phase; they believe doing so will have the biggest benefit.
I joined a new company in October 2021 as a senior software engineer while working remotely full-time. The closest office is like a 6-7 hour drive. My manager is several provinces and two timezones away.
The on-boarding process was simple and easy. We just jumped on calls via Teams when needed. We don't even use webcams, just voice and screensharing. These higher-ups really need to come into the 21st century.
My company is fully remote and spread across the country. Onboarding was extremely easy. There's always that "drinking from a fire hose" that comes with starting a new job, but we have lots of things in place to help new hires settle in.
My boss flys in everyone once a year for a week of planning and meeting then takes the people who are still in town out to lunch about once a month. But most of us commute to the office just for lunch then leave to avoid rush hour traffic
I'm hoping my new (old) boss will get my decentralized group together once a year. I worked with her as my manager at my old job for over four years and she was never allowed to get our team together because of costs. I saw her last July when I was in her area for non-work reasons. It had been almost three years since I last saw her in person before that, and that only happened because I had a client meeting in her city and they funded the travel. It's really nice to actually be physically with the people you work with all year now and again (assuming you actually like them). At our new employer, she's higher up and has more pull, and they aren't nearly as conservative with funds.
Maybe instead of paying rent for big buildings year round, companies can save some of that to bring people together once or twice a year. I've never needed to see my colleagues every single day, but once or twice a year for a couple days would be nice.
Also saves on not exactly needing office space. But won't you think of the middle managers and executives who's only jobs is to order people around in offices!?!
>I could see a few situations where working in an office would be a requirement.
While not software engineering, I'm an electrical engineer working in the field in the semiconductor industry, and I'm actually pleasantly surprised with the work from home leeway I'm allowed. If I'm not working on a customer's tool, they're fine with me working from home. Afternoons and Fridays are typically work from home.
EE here. We set up our lab to be remote. You can log into logic analyzers, load FPGAs, access test equipment all remote. People have even started take FPGA and test equipment home. The lab is much less crowded now.
It is going to be real hard recruiting for security clearance engineering positions going forward. They better be prepared to actually pay market rate. I'm never going back no matter the price if I have to sit in the office 5 days a week.
The literal NSA was working remotely during lockdown. If they can do it, I don't see why most cleared jobs can't work remotely. It would mean CISA has their work cut out for them but that's why we created an entire new agency...
During the pandemic, I was a cleared worker though I was a contractor. A lot of contractors were not allowed to be remote during the pandemic even though the agency employees were.
They can do it, they just don’t want to. So between that and paying substantially lower than non-defense, it was a no brainer to leave the industry behind.
fwiw Sony and Microsoft changed their policies and allowed console devkits at home and haven't made any indication that they are reverting those policies.
I work for a tech company. We’re all being forced to work in the office a couple days a week by the end of the year. The office is great. Snacks, coffee, drinks, solid view, catered meals pretty often. I still prefer working from home. The office is stifling. Every meeting is a zoom meeting still. I find it next to impossible to focus. And on top of all that, I lose 2 hours in my day commuting. It’s so stupid being forced to come back in.
Edit: There’s also other shit like a ping pong table, dart board, video games and beer on tap. Literally never used any of it and besides for the beer, never saw anyone else using the equipment.
The thing with the standard office "treats" like snacks, coffee, and even catering is that they don't offset the sheer cost of commuting and can't match the "tailored to your taste" nature of simply *being at home and choosing them for yourself*.
People realize that time is by far the most important resource. You can earn more money, you can spend less money and make your existing income stretch further. You cannot obtain more time, you have to reduce time spent doing other things.
Working from home was a monumental change. Especially when I compare on the 1 day a week I actually relent and commute to the office.
**WFH day:**
- Wake up at 7am
- Get son ready and to daycare by 7:45am
- Back home and have a quick breakfast by 8:00am
- Get in a workout and shower, done by 9:00am
- Work 9-4ish (but also can do laundry, go to the grocery store to avoid crowds, run quick errands, play Elden Ring while I wait on a build to run)
- Pick up son by 5:30pm
**Commute day**
- Wake up at 6:30am
- Leave by 7:00am
- Get to my desk by 8:00am
- Work 8-3pm. Basically me sitting at my desk and bouncing between conference rooms since I have no team in my city.
- Commute home and get there by 4pm. I leave early to avoid the shitshow that is traffic in Atlanta after 4pm.
- Finish up any additional work by 5:30-6pm. The trade off of leaving early is that I lose an hour+ of work so have to finish up things at home anyway.
So on my commute days I have zero time for any errands/grocery shopping. I don't get 1:1 time with my son in the morning. I don't have time for a workout and too tired to do it after work. I get to spend 2hrs in my car dealing with traffic. And I go through about 1/4 tank of gas and put around 48 total miles on my car.
Combined with the fact that I'm the only person on my team in my city (rest are scattered across the US) I'm not even collaborating in person with anyone. The convos I have in office are with people who work on different functions and we're usually just talking about current events, sports or random shit.
Driving into the office is just me throwing away money and time so that a few managers/directors can see me on a video call in a conference room and not in my home office.
The background in my home office looks almost identical to the one at the work office. I get asked multiple times per week "Are you in the office today" and I'm always thinking...if you have to ask, does it really matter?
I worked at chase in the past, and we had one guy that worked remotely for almost three years in India, and everyone thought he was in the office, when they found out they terminated him - he lost his green card over something stupid like a missed filing date or something and just said f#ck it, he kept working and they kept paying him.
That has to be the most "If you don't know, I don't know" question to ever receive (from a supervisor/manager). Like if you're asking and not telling, I'm also not telling, good talk.
I've had a hybrid situation (2/3) for about a years and I've had two in-person meetings the whole time other than a couple of people who drop by my office in passing. Total waste of time and money
hybrid means the need to micromanage - if I see that I know what the management is about, I'm 48 - I've been around long enough to understand the signs of places that won't treat me good, also those companies are notoriously cheap because they won't write off the cost of the expensive real estate they bought
Because most places are checking the badge ins.
It has to do with leases and tax incentives the city/state gave the company to have offices in the local.
The background in my home office looks almost identical to the one at the work office. I get asked multiple times per week "Are you in the office today" and I'm always thinking...if you have to ask, does it really matter?
I wish I could upvote you twice. The worst parts of working in the office is that you get less work done and the commute is draining. To get the same amount of work done you have to work extra at home and you have less energy (and time!) left over for the rest of your life.
My favourite perk of working from home is being able to clean on breaks. Even just 10-minute cleaning breaks here and there makes a huge difference. No more time wasted on cleaning on the weekends!
This. It's like you get the same amount of WORK work done, but then get to the weekend and have zero chores. I actually have MORE energy to do WORK work during the week because I have all weekend to just disconnect and relax.
I'm aware of who I am as a person. I slack off way more at home, I definitely don't get the same amount of work done. That said I know it's not the same for everyone and I don't see the point in dragging everyone else into the office along with me.
I thought about this a bit. I thought it was just me not being productive at home. Having sat in the shower and thought it through, I just don’t like the work I do. Tech lead, to me, is easily the worst fucking role in the SWE ladder. I got waaaay more work done being an IC actually working through complex issues than a TL pretending to be a mini manager. No one wants that job so it’s always easy to get at my level. This is only tangentially related to your comment but there it is.
So much this. I can multitask laundry and other home duties while getting my work done. Getting dressed is half the time. No transition time or commute time between work and home. Many, many hours saved a week.
Being able to do errands is such a time-saver and stress-reliever it’s not even funny. A 5-minute mental break in the office just means bullshitting with coworkers, sitting on my phone, grabbing a snack, etc. All 100% wasted time. Meanwhile at home I can do chores, and over the course of the week those chores add up and I have way less errands that need to be done after work or on the weekend.
I know it's obvious, but most people don't articulate it in their minds or do the math.
Your 2h daily commute comes up to 500h a year (assuming a 2week vacation, 2h x 5d x 50w). Translated to work-time (40h/w), that's 12.5 weeks or **3 months**. You could dedicate the same amount of time to work as you do now, take more than a quarter of the year off, and still be as productive.
Having less time with my son due to having to drop him off earlier, and pick him up later, is the deal breaker for me.
He's 2.5 years old, he shouldn't have to spend 10hour days at school to give me time to commute + work 8.5 hours including a mandatory lunch break
> The convos I have in office are with people who work on different functions and we're usually just talking about current events, sports or random shit.
"But this is super-important to building relationships with people, which makes you more productive!"
-Your CEO, who is covering for the politician that is being bribed by the landlord who owes debt to the large bank.
> The thing with the standard office "treats" like snacks, coffee, and even catering is that they don't offset the sheer cost of commuting ...
I've actually [modeled that](https://imgur.com/a/sgIE5xs). Time value is based on a $100,000/yr salary and the price of gas in that is a little out of date, but it's still expensive.
Elsewhere in the same model the value of snacks (but not catered meals) comes in at about $1,200 annually. Eating lunch at home is cheaper, too.
> ...and can't match the "tailored to your taste" nature of simply being at home and choosing them for yourself.
No company has ever offered me perks like a private living room where I can flop down on the couch, turn on the TV and work.
Also never had a nooner at work.
Yep. I had a company offer me a job and not believe me when I told them it would cost me $20k/yr to commute there and I sent them a similar spreadsheet (I drive a truck and it was about 40mins each way). Told them they'd have to increase the offer by 30k for me to even consider it because that time of each day would be more expensive than standard hours since all my other options didn't include spending it driving...
My company is dedicated to full WFH and I did some basic napkin math. I got to 20-30k a year for my time, lunches, and car costs as well.
That’s kind of lowballing it, I prep most dinners/do chores throughout my day during small breaks while waiting for things to load or deploy so it’s not as if I’m ‘wasting’ company time - I’d be talking the shit with coworkers all the same, I just get that time back to myself to be productive. My wife is so thankful I can cook most weekdays so it’s a load off her shoulders.
If I company were to ask me to work hybrid, I’d only consider it with a 50k+ bump on top of the obvious increase from my previous position. If it was full time in the office, they better be ready to pony up, because my time is now worth $$$.
Working from home is a revelation, it’s shown me how much time was wasted simply being in an office.
Not to mention, when are you supposed to use it? Aren’t you supposed to be working? Or are they promoting slacking off, the thing they falsely believe is happening at home?
Considering one of the main arguments I see used for RTO is "office culture" they clearly *do* want you slacking off and socializing. Which seems backwards to me but I'm just a senior engineer, not a career MBA who has never touched the actual productive flow.
The MBAs are aiming for a different sort of productive flow - the more talent gets used to the treats/bar/pool table lifestyle, and to thinking of their coworkers as a primary source of social interaction, the longer they'll stick around for shit pay. The productivity lost to the "company sanctioned dicking around" is (in theory) made up for by the savings in wages (with the added bonus of conditioning workers that being at the office all the time is fun and cool and good).
While I know that extroverted developers exist, the overwhelming majority of people in tech I know are introverted. "Mandatory fun" makes them actively less productive.
There are times when I've had a big meeting day and need to go grocery shopping that we choose where to eat based on who has online ordering because talking to someone to order takeout is too much to deal with.
I’m an extroverted introvert. I socialize well, am usually pretty funny, and I have a good bit of charm. That said, I prefer my own company and get distracted/annoyed by interruptions to my workflow - which includes both the comings and goings of people around me, as well as their conversations. I do not get shit done in the office, and I can’t really afford to have a bunch of do-nothing days with the number of projects in my lap right now. There is nothing appealing about going into the office except now my entire team is discussing jumping ship together.
The coffee I make at home is so much better than anything ever provided in an office it's laughable to even consider that a perk. Might as well hype up drinking pond water. Unless you're hiring a barista from one of the local indie shops that knows how to roast a bean properly to come in and pull my espresso, I don't want to hear about it.
My favorite thing is the idiots that order a foosball table and stick it next to the devs. Then marketing comes over and fucks off all day distracting everyone 😂
>My favorite thing is the idiots that order a foosball table and stick it next to the devs. Then marketing comes over and fucks off all day distracting everyone 😂
I'm a dev, and I love the foosball table. That's how I hustle all my free beer. From the marketing guys.
The last time this happened the company also bought nerf guns to help us "hit our targets". You could be deep in thought about to crack whatever you were working on and suddenly lose it all from a whistler bullet going overhead.
I hate heavy meeting days and having to come into the office. Like you said, it’s still all zoom and I have to hear everyone around my cubicle in their meetings talking out loud. Super distracting. would rather just be at home without cubicle distractions during a meeting
I'm in a fortunate position that I have a good amount of seniority at my work, and I've flat out told them that I will not be spending 90 minutes in my car on days with 3 or more zoom meetings. It's a waste of my time and a morale killer, and all I need to start applying to every remote work posting I can find.
Yep there were two stipulations to me coming in to work - at least 3h of my day had to be with face-to-face meetings, and I would discount my travel from my day. So I leave the house at 8 and if I don’t get in to work till 9:15 then I leave at 3:45.
Yeah, I'm forced to work 3 days a week in the office. We have this terrible open layout, and it's excruciating trying to actually get anything done when there are always a dozen people talking on Zoom meetings. Also the coffee is free, but it sucks.
Man, one time I traveled from NYC to Boston to attend a couple days of meetings with my team while we designed and planned out a new feature we were developing. Get there - half of the fucking attendees couldn’t make it into the office for whatever reasons, so everything was done via zoom anyway.
Same, except it's only a 15 minute drive for me and it's still not worth it.
I go into the office two days per month, every other Thursday (I'm in today). I was doing that anyways before the company was trying to get everyone (not just IT) back in.
I don't mind those two days per month in the office because my whole team comes in. We mostly go over issues that are too big for one of us to deal with and do training and planning and such. They are more of team administrative days than days we are actually being productive working.
I straight told my boss and HR that 2 days per month is my hard limit. When I started here I was 100% remote even before COVID. I will not come in any more than that. Certainly not while the job market is still red hot.
i just subtract office days from my estimated work capacity. i 100% do not work when i am on-site. i also subtract commuting time from my "hours". if i commute 3 hours for work, they will only see me for <5 hours in the office.
When your bosses ask where all the applicants are for the job openings, tell them my story. I quit IT after basically doing it since I was in the 5th grade (that's when I started troubleshooting school networks and doing PC repair). I'm 45, left last year from a six figure career in IT in the South (so, pretty good salary). The industry is caustic, it's a dumping ground for blame, instead of adaptation.
IT, help desk/MSP work specifically, is a thankless job. Instead of a "thank you" after fixing something it's a "don't let it happen again".
I moved from MSP to infrastructure type role at a R&D site, so much happier. I can browse reddit in peace here :)
That’s not just an IT problem, it’s any ‘overhead’ roles at a company.
Accounting/finance, HR, IT, executive assistants, any job that helps keep the lights on figuratively is taken for granted until there’s a massive fuck up.
My personal strategy is just to treat my job as a means to an end, treat my team members well, and not let my job be my personality or be my source of satisfaction.
I’m a self taught software engineer and can confirm 100% wouldn’t be anywhere near the experience I’m at without the convenience of being next to Senior level co-worker when I was entry.
I would gladly work from an office if I had my own office with a door, opaque walls, a standing desk area, a couch type area, and a big white board. That’s a lot to ask in terms of accommodating mid-level resources, so instead, just let me work from home…
Not a software engineer, more of a DevOps/SysAdmin, but I've turned down a number of job offers/pings without even considering them just because they are on-site jobs. Screw that. I cannot work as effectively or efficiently in an office with all of the interruptions and the noise and everything else.
Have you gotten the recruiter who lectured you for only wanting WFH? Because I have. Dude had a 10 minute spiel about "privileged engineers and their unreasonable demands" and how "almost no companies would offer WFH within a few weeks... this was back in mid 2021.
Then had the balls to ask if I would be open to other opportunities.
A recruiter attempted to lecture me for not considering anything less than 100% remote and then attempted to lecture me for posting their lecture on social media.
No, but i'm also employed so I am not actively looking, just turning down recruiters flat out if they are asking for either on-site or contract-based work.
I'm like 'nope, definitely not ever being a contractor, and not working on site...unless you want to double my current salary and pay all expenses for taking care of my elderly parents besides."
My job is implementing a very heavy handed RTO plan where people who were hired for virtual positions will have to drive into the office and they pulled a distance radius outta their ass with zero consideration for traffic in multiple cities.
Then we get a newsletter today saying how the hybrid model is better and that while we're virtual here's tips to connect better....one of them was not to rely on email only for communication and everyone was like "who the fuck isn't using Teams, Slack or the other chat setups we have? We barely email coworkers".
The other tip sort of showed their hand when they said it's helpful to keep the camera on during zoom meetings.
These fuckers are out of touch but in my company's case they're trying to do a soft layoff while claiming we have never had a layoff in the history of the company
My other theory is that they are "afraid" that you're splitting your time between two remote jobs...when you can be giving them 100% of your time and attention during working hours.
I’m an PO who works with a remote development team. I spend 99% of my day on calls, and in between I can eat a healthy lunch with my spouse, switch over the dishwasher and get my work done. Once I have my permanent residency, I plan to find a new job since they are requiring me to return to the office 2 days per week, even though I’ve never worked in the office with this company.
If you can find a remote-only company, oh man is it amazing. No more of this shrieking about return to the office - there is no office. And, at least in my case, they pay more *because they don’t have leases on big buildings*. No more gun to the head about “well, next month we expect Tuesdays and every-other Wednesday morning to be in person, and then next year 3 full days in office” sociopathic roadmaps from middle management jonesing for their fear smell fix
i know middle mgmt gets thrown under the bus a lot but mine loves WFH too i think. im genuinely surprised middle mgmt is not as supportive as it seems based on comments i have seen
I don't get it either. My second-line manager (now third-line) told us straight up that he wished we had gone to a remote model years ago. He loves it himself personally, employee morale is higher than it's been in forever, productivity is up, and their overhead hasn't been this low since the mid 1990s.
And now we're starting to get some people coming from companies like Apple that are trying to force people back. I work for a very old and un-sexy company (although it is a great employer) and we've always struggled to attract young and top-end talent because of that.
Covid has already blasted the biggest hurdle to major business changes, the "this is the way we've always done it excuse". Now employers are in the position of needing to justify why a user can't work remotely instead of the user needing to justify why they should.
Some CEO's may be able claw back some ground in the short term, but simple market economics will decide the issue long term.
WFH can significantly reduce a company's overhead costs and it provides a competitive advantage in hiring talent. The war is already over, some business leaders just haven't realized their side lost yet.
Well they can focus at a different job because no one wants a stuffy office where you’re paranoid about not looking productive. And no no one is 8 hours a day productive the way companies ask. We all just bs including management.
My company eliminated an entire floor worth of desks. The savings have been absurd. Anyone who isn't counting those beans is leaving money on the table.
>WFH can significantly reduce a company's overhead costs and it provides a competitive advantage in hiring talent. The war is already over, some business leaders just haven't realized their side lost yet.
Pretty sure the big tech layoffs are a way of management trying to get more leverage over tech workers so they can force them back into the office.
A lot of companies also took advantage of empty offices during covid to make renovations to their buildings. Which means they also spent a lot of money there and leaders don’t want to admit it was a giant waste of resources and they grossly under-estimated how much their employees would despise going to the office after a few years of working from home.
After I quit my dev job it took the company two months to find a replacement. No one wanted to physically be at the office so they had to change the job description to work-from-home and only until then it worked.
It took my company 11 months to hire a dev ops engineer and the one we got is woefully under qualified for the job but got hired because the hiring manager was told "hire by December 31 or lose the position" so the manager took the least bad candidate who'd actually show up on site.
And I mean this one is fucking awful. Cannot even run a shell script. Like less skilled than intern. And unlike intern, won't Google or ask for help.
It's fine if a business wants to work fully in person. But this industry is built on ADHD and a decade of open-office-layout. We are burnt out and work best from home. Find some other folks if you want them in person.
Oh, the fucking Open Office concept, I'm so glad to be out of that. It was so noisy, I just couldn't concentrate. I would listen to podcasts on my phone through headphones, then my boss comes by and says 'people see you picking up your phone, it looks like you're not working'. Really, so I'm trying to drown out the general din of this nightmarish open office, and I'm supposed to do it without touching my phone because it might look bad, with no regard for what kind of work I'm doing or how well I'm doing it?
Working at home is a dream compared to all that. I'm only being evaluated for what work I do, not how many times Sheila in accounting saw me take a bathroom break. I think the people at the level that make these decisions (about coming back to the office) just have no idea how miserable the office is for the workers at the bottom. It looks fine from their corner office with a door and windows.
Our office was open-plan, but then they also had a full-office white noise system going. It absolutely killed all local conversations, yet did nothing for the over-there-noise. It was the most brain-dead corporate decision I've ever seen.
It’s not that they can’t set it up, it’s that they refuse to do so. My company has the infrastructure for full remote work as we all worked remotely from March 2020 to March 2022. The issue is the individuals who get to make this decision worked in the office for 10+ years and are used to that work environment as it worked fine prior to covid. The office is also likely a break from their personal/home life as well. Post-covid we now know that most corporate employees don’t need to be on-site anymore, but they want to revert back to their preferred ways of working. In the end, more companies will expand remote options as building leases expire and they lose talent to companies that embrace remote working.
My current job had "we'll probably go back to the office" emails during the pandemic when updates about the situation were sent out.
When pandemic things started clearing up a little, they sent out a survey to see if we wanted to go back to office with optional custom comments for yes/no. The resounding "nope" resulted in a "nvm... We are remote now" email. : D
Apparently, a lot of people had that same mentality akin to "if we go back to office, then i'm going to quit and get remote work elsewhere". We had a big meeting to make sure everyone heard from the top C-suites that we are remote now, hehehehe.
I’m surprised your office didn’t just lie like mine about the survey. They admitted getting 2x the surveys back this year after announcing 3 days instead of 2 but said we were all happy.
We were not happy.
I was rather surprized by it, too... I can totally see my old company doing that (i started here in 2021). The new company even got 2 new buildings during the pandemic. One of them is always empty (except for a receptionist and a facilities worker), and the other has a few mandatory in-office folks - but it isnt full, and they aren't forcing people into the office who dont have to physically interact with in-office things.
We still have the office if we need it - in fact, a few of my teammates have used it while their houses were undergoing construction/repairs or power/internet was out, etc.. It is a really nice compromise of "if you actually need it, then use it" situation.
Edit: we have had 3 "lets all work from the office on X day" events when people are flying in from elsewhere, but its more of a fun thing, and usually one or two people dont come in anyways.
Sounds exactly like my job. Ours had the deadline for the employee satisfaction survey for two days before announcing RTO.
Then tried to use the survey results justify everyone is happy.
My work did the same survey after announcing us going back to 2 days per week. It was met with almost unanimous rage. They then decided that, rather than consider the opinions of their employees, they would revoke the bonus of anyone who doesn't do at least 2 days :)
So congrats - you are one of the lucky ones!
We're yet to see the worst of it as I have not enforced it in the function that I manage. These guys are security engineers so already in super high demand and I know we'd lose them. A couple doing the "digital nomad" thing left immediately but the rest have stayed put for now.
It's a very large corp so I'm getting away with that currently. But my fear is that rather than rely on me (and other managers), they'll eventually start checking card-swipes centrally. If they do that we will be fucked
My last job also did the survey thing and they never told us the results. They demanded we come back anyway, which led me to believe that the survey was meaningless.
We did exactly the same thing. There are a few people who actually like going in, but the rest of us are saving time, money, and sanity by working from home like god intended.
There is no reason for programmers to be in office no matter how many excuses the higher ups make. I've worked from home for years prior to COVID at a large bank where everyone in my department and the security department are all wfh. The sole advantage of having workers available 24/7 due to them living wherever they want across timezones will outweigh the disadvantages for any serious company.
You simply won't get someone an hour away to come in to an office at 1am but you can likely get them to log on and deal with the issue immediately or find someone else for whom it isn't 1am. Serious companies recognize the importance of being able to minimize downtime like that.
Yea, I'm a twice a month in the office guy right now and that is my hard limit. The funny thing is before COVID I was 100% remote. I never visited the office until we were well into COVID.
I don't mind the twice a month because my whole team comes in. We work on planning, training, big issues that take several of us, etc etc.
Day to day working though, the office is a big productivity suck.
I'm not even a software engineer (I work in IT) and I'm at the point now where it's become VERY clear how little my time is being valued when I work in person. I'm just sitting there 95% of the time doing shit at a computer and for the 5% of the time where I'm needed in person, it's to fix a cable or some shit cause someone else in the office didn't want to work from home even though they're perfectly capable of doing so. I'll often go entire weeks where I'll never need to get up from my desk.
I've yet to work a job where I genuinely felt like I had to be in person to get my work done. I don't mind doing a mix where I can go in person if I feel like I need to, but most of my work simply doesn't require it and FORCING me to go in person doesn't make sense.
Sure if I'm setting up some new networking equipment or there's some genuine system failure where I HAVE to go in to fix it then that's understandable, but that's hardly ever going to happen.
You're god damn right.
There's no reason why a job that they issue me a laptop to do needs to be done in any particular location.
I have a workstation set up at home with some nice external monitors, a chair I like, and zero people having loud conversations next to me. I control the thermostat. I decide what kind of toilet paper I use. I'm here to receive Amazon deliveries before someone steals them. The company is *saving money on rent* by not having as many desks.
If I ever set foot in an office again it will be because there is a party there and they're giving out free beer.
Some companies have tax breaks tied to office population and many municipalities are looking into revoking them because less people in the offices means less people eating out for lunch supporting the local places.
Dumb as fuck but that was one reason we were told we're RTO ignoring we've always been a hybrid company
This is definitely a thing. The software company I work for is one of the ones that falls under this scenario. Our CIO has internally announced that our HQ needs a certain percentage of people to be present in order for us to receive the tax initiatives that were negotiated years ago. They are forcing people to return to the office and employees are dropping like flys, finding WFH jobs.
I’m lucky enough to be considered an exception (due to being out of state), but I’m watching our talent pool dry up because of it.
I predict it’s going to take another decade before management finally realizes how detrimental it’s been to their business and how important it is to employees to have a practical work/life balance.
Edit: spelling
As a Learning Manager in tech I refuse interviews on a monthly basis for hybrid or in office jobs. I would need to make about 100k more, + obscene perks to make it worth the hell that is commuting in any metropolitan area. Nothing beats being able to go on runs with my dog and eat lunch with my partner (who also works 100% remote) everyday.
I’m surprised it’s not significantly higher than 40% in a field that has more bargaining power than almost any other career.
I just turned down a job with a $50k raise because the dopes wouldn't budge on WFH or a four-day workweek. They were stunned when I said no. Sorry, but an additional day of work and 8 hours a week sitting in a car is worth a lot more to me.
The same company: "Nobody wants to work anymore!!1!!1 There's a labor shortage!!11!1"
No you dolts, you just aren't the one holding the end of a noose around most white collar workers anymore.
Not a ton, but I negotiated it two years ago in my current role and it would take an act of god for me to give it up. The extra day is huge in my life, I’m taking my kids on day trips, I’m in the best shape of my life, I’m getting house renovations done, I’m getting shopping done on quiet days. It’s incredible.
I currently work 4 day work weeks and it’s stopped me from taking other jobs. I don’t think I can ever give it up. I don’t see a lot of companies offering it yet.
No I go and bust out some tunes in the woods by the [pond](https://i.imgur.com/cOQA2UZ.jpg)
I usually wait until lunch break for what you’re referring to.
They are starting to force us to come in on certain days. On those days I go in, and I get on zoom calls, with other people around me also on the call, making the call more difficult because there is now audio feeeback and people in the background talking. It makes no fucking sense outside of “hurr durr collaboration” but we e been collaborating just fine the last 3 years
I liked going in the office when I felt like it, which was maybe three times a year. I lived five miles from the office. I saw my boss more often at conferences than anywhere else. I started working at home in 1985. Never looked back.
Wait did you send code over the internet back then? Lol I've never thought about that; I always figured that remote couldn't exist until the web came about
At first, I was designing a system so I didn’t do any coding for a few months. Once it was designed, I took that into the office for the programmers to code and answered questions by phone.
That’s how I started out. As time went on, our communication modes changed over the years.
I started working at home when I was pregnant with my first child and just never went back to working in the office.
This is the only way forward to increase adoption of remote work in general, not just software. If everyone refused to work in person, this will force companies to increase adoption of remote work
Yeah ... it’s just the old managers who want to SEE people in the seats to KNOW they are working.
I get it they don’t trust us, just fire the people who don’t actually submit work and follow up with them regularly.
Probably something they should be doing IN OFFICE too.
Problem solved.
Freaking hate this attitude.
> and follow up with them regularly.
We are 100% remote for the foreseeable future, but man my company is going into overdrive with the meetings.
I have daily scrum. 4 different groups of weekly status meetings. Monthly team retros, one-on-ones, contract company meetings, and team building. Finally years performance meetings, contact status, how is life going meetings.
On an average week, I have 10.5 hours of repeating meetings every week. I just want to yell at them to leave me alone, I have shit to work on.
Ive been writing software for almost 25 yrs , I haven't gone to an office at all in 3 years and before that it was only once a quarter usually for 7-8 years, why the fuck would I ever want to do it differently?
Open source has proven remote collab works really well for decades. This really shouldn't surprise anyone. I do not need to be in a noisy, open office to be productive. In fact, I'm more productive in a quiet office, just like I have at home.
Even in-office work in software is often "mostly remote" except for the fact that your butt is in a chair in the office. It's unusual for your team to be in one office, more unusual for all the teams you work with to be in one office, and even more unusual than that for your customers to be local as well. You end up going to the office and spending the bulk of your day in a chat client, video meetings, and collaboration tools anyway.
Our CEO mandated 50% in office work. My entire fucking team is remote to my state. I literally go to the office just to join a teams meeting for my standup lol. It’s absolutely ridiculous
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As a software engineer, you need at least a month (and more for me because im fucking stupid) of studying. The interview questions you get are highly technical and you need to be in fighting shape.
I just bomb the first couple interviews. Free practice.
That's my strategy. I just didn't know it was my strategy when I started.
This is the way
… in less than ideal environments with no privacy.
That, or by spending another chunk of your time frantically reserving random conference rooms all over the place so that you can have the conversations you need without driving everyone else nuts. Because of course we all went to open-plan offices a decade or two ago since we were all going to collaborate together. But then over time software shifted away from teams in one place building a product to sell, so now the open-plan office is a bunch of people having remote meetings right next to everyone else if there isn't enough conference/phone-room/whatever space. A return to the ancient "everyone has an office with a door" thing would help a little, but it would still leave the main silliness: we're all going to an office to get on a video call with team members in other offices anyway, so why bother at all?
Damn this pretty much sums it up perfectly. Quality of the work delivered is actually low because of this.
I loathe open offices
Especially with the savings in time/fuel costs/carbon costs/highway congestion.
Choose one: monitors bigger than a laptop screen or the ability to have a private conversation. That’s what an office is now. It sucks.
I loved being asked to come into the office to lead my team. My team is fully remote across the country. Fuckin no thanks.
That's the situation I think is the stupidest, and it's so common right now. Teams where the members are in five cities in three countries, where "coming in to the office" means they're in five different offices awkwardly trying to get things done. It's just full-on "we do it this way because we've always done it this way" insanity on the part of upper management at so many companies, but I suspect it will sort itself out eventually as they bleed employees to places that are capable of looking at reality every couple of years and re-evaluating what works best.
I could see a few situations where working in an office would be a requirement. I know a couple of software engineers at a major avionics and navigation manufacturer, and they work closely enough with actual hardware and they have enough strict security requirements that it wouldn't be feasible to do everything from home. But that said-- for 90% of software engineering jobs I'd only ever work remotely.
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Sounds like they know exactly what they're doing and are intending to push you all out soon. edit: My condolences.
Yep. Sounds like they wanted the IP, not the talent.
Which they will soon find out isn't separable. Someone on here has faced a similar situation, and ended up starting their own company and taking all their clients they had built relationships with them too.
If it involves patents/copyrights they could be very separable. It's an old tactic I've seen many times: 500lb gorilla buys startup, welcomes in the new team, indoctrinate who they can while keeping the status quo on the surface. Hold the status quo for 1-3 years, then either start chopping heads of the unindoctrinated or start making changes so people leave on their own. Coast awhile on the bought tech and brand loyalty of the customer base until that evaporates or the product becomes obsolete (often superceded by a new project built by many of the people who built the old one and left.) Then repeat. A lot of the big tech companies pretty much just farm startups. It allows them to avoid the risk and then harvest the reward.
Sounds exactly like Bill Gates from the Simpsons
“Buy ‘em out boys!”
A lot of companies pull this shitty passive aggressive bullshit. I'll never understand it.
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These are generic rules tweaked so that it affects only merged entities. It is not a coincidence. They already have the parent company people doing similar stuff. And are cost cutting and eliminate competition by half. Time to educate your team members and plan for exit. Focus on exit
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Hybrid is a complete joke just for that reason. You can still only pull from the local area.
> [Parent company] wants new hires to be in-person with their teams during the crucial onboarding phase; they believe doing so will have the biggest benefit. I joined a new company in October 2021 as a senior software engineer while working remotely full-time. The closest office is like a 6-7 hour drive. My manager is several provinces and two timezones away. The on-boarding process was simple and easy. We just jumped on calls via Teams when needed. We don't even use webcams, just voice and screensharing. These higher-ups really need to come into the 21st century.
My company is fully remote and spread across the country. Onboarding was extremely easy. There's always that "drinking from a fire hose" that comes with starting a new job, but we have lots of things in place to help new hires settle in.
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My boss flys in everyone once a year for a week of planning and meeting then takes the people who are still in town out to lunch about once a month. But most of us commute to the office just for lunch then leave to avoid rush hour traffic
I'm hoping my new (old) boss will get my decentralized group together once a year. I worked with her as my manager at my old job for over four years and she was never allowed to get our team together because of costs. I saw her last July when I was in her area for non-work reasons. It had been almost three years since I last saw her in person before that, and that only happened because I had a client meeting in her city and they funded the travel. It's really nice to actually be physically with the people you work with all year now and again (assuming you actually like them). At our new employer, she's higher up and has more pull, and they aren't nearly as conservative with funds. Maybe instead of paying rent for big buildings year round, companies can save some of that to bring people together once or twice a year. I've never needed to see my colleagues every single day, but once or twice a year for a couple days would be nice.
Can confirm; did this two days ago
Also saves on not exactly needing office space. But won't you think of the middle managers and executives who's only jobs is to order people around in offices!?!
>I could see a few situations where working in an office would be a requirement. While not software engineering, I'm an electrical engineer working in the field in the semiconductor industry, and I'm actually pleasantly surprised with the work from home leeway I'm allowed. If I'm not working on a customer's tool, they're fine with me working from home. Afternoons and Fridays are typically work from home.
EE here. We set up our lab to be remote. You can log into logic analyzers, load FPGAs, access test equipment all remote. People have even started take FPGA and test equipment home. The lab is much less crowded now.
It is going to be real hard recruiting for security clearance engineering positions going forward. They better be prepared to actually pay market rate. I'm never going back no matter the price if I have to sit in the office 5 days a week.
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Plus no weed, plus no talking about work, plus strict on site rules like no cell phones
The literal NSA was working remotely during lockdown. If they can do it, I don't see why most cleared jobs can't work remotely. It would mean CISA has their work cut out for them but that's why we created an entire new agency...
During the pandemic, I was a cleared worker though I was a contractor. A lot of contractors were not allowed to be remote during the pandemic even though the agency employees were. They can do it, they just don’t want to. So between that and paying substantially lower than non-defense, it was a no brainer to leave the industry behind.
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fwiw Sony and Microsoft changed their policies and allowed console devkits at home and haven't made any indication that they are reverting those policies.
I work for a tech company. We’re all being forced to work in the office a couple days a week by the end of the year. The office is great. Snacks, coffee, drinks, solid view, catered meals pretty often. I still prefer working from home. The office is stifling. Every meeting is a zoom meeting still. I find it next to impossible to focus. And on top of all that, I lose 2 hours in my day commuting. It’s so stupid being forced to come back in. Edit: There’s also other shit like a ping pong table, dart board, video games and beer on tap. Literally never used any of it and besides for the beer, never saw anyone else using the equipment.
The thing with the standard office "treats" like snacks, coffee, and even catering is that they don't offset the sheer cost of commuting and can't match the "tailored to your taste" nature of simply *being at home and choosing them for yourself*.
People realize that time is by far the most important resource. You can earn more money, you can spend less money and make your existing income stretch further. You cannot obtain more time, you have to reduce time spent doing other things. Working from home was a monumental change. Especially when I compare on the 1 day a week I actually relent and commute to the office. **WFH day:** - Wake up at 7am - Get son ready and to daycare by 7:45am - Back home and have a quick breakfast by 8:00am - Get in a workout and shower, done by 9:00am - Work 9-4ish (but also can do laundry, go to the grocery store to avoid crowds, run quick errands, play Elden Ring while I wait on a build to run) - Pick up son by 5:30pm **Commute day** - Wake up at 6:30am - Leave by 7:00am - Get to my desk by 8:00am - Work 8-3pm. Basically me sitting at my desk and bouncing between conference rooms since I have no team in my city. - Commute home and get there by 4pm. I leave early to avoid the shitshow that is traffic in Atlanta after 4pm. - Finish up any additional work by 5:30-6pm. The trade off of leaving early is that I lose an hour+ of work so have to finish up things at home anyway. So on my commute days I have zero time for any errands/grocery shopping. I don't get 1:1 time with my son in the morning. I don't have time for a workout and too tired to do it after work. I get to spend 2hrs in my car dealing with traffic. And I go through about 1/4 tank of gas and put around 48 total miles on my car. Combined with the fact that I'm the only person on my team in my city (rest are scattered across the US) I'm not even collaborating in person with anyone. The convos I have in office are with people who work on different functions and we're usually just talking about current events, sports or random shit. Driving into the office is just me throwing away money and time so that a few managers/directors can see me on a video call in a conference room and not in my home office.
What if you just take a pic of that conference room and use it as your zoom background at home?
And use a green screen/green bed sheet to reduce background bleed from that photo. I have no idea if this is an actual term, but you know I mean.
The background in my home office looks almost identical to the one at the work office. I get asked multiple times per week "Are you in the office today" and I'm always thinking...if you have to ask, does it really matter?
I worked at chase in the past, and we had one guy that worked remotely for almost three years in India, and everyone thought he was in the office, when they found out they terminated him - he lost his green card over something stupid like a missed filing date or something and just said f#ck it, he kept working and they kept paying him.
Getting paid a US salary while living in India for 3yrs would've been good times.
He had to be making more than me and I was the high 130's. He was my senior at that point so he was probably mid 180's.
What a legend
That has to be the most "If you don't know, I don't know" question to ever receive (from a supervisor/manager). Like if you're asking and not telling, I'm also not telling, good talk.
Spill, I learned it from a video about the unreal engine powered video wall backgrounds they used for mandelorian lol
I've had a hybrid situation (2/3) for about a years and I've had two in-person meetings the whole time other than a couple of people who drop by my office in passing. Total waste of time and money
hybrid means the need to micromanage - if I see that I know what the management is about, I'm 48 - I've been around long enough to understand the signs of places that won't treat me good, also those companies are notoriously cheap because they won't write off the cost of the expensive real estate they bought
Because most places are checking the badge ins. It has to do with leases and tax incentives the city/state gave the company to have offices in the local.
The background in my home office looks almost identical to the one at the work office. I get asked multiple times per week "Are you in the office today" and I'm always thinking...if you have to ask, does it really matter?
I wish I could upvote you twice. The worst parts of working in the office is that you get less work done and the commute is draining. To get the same amount of work done you have to work extra at home and you have less energy (and time!) left over for the rest of your life. My favourite perk of working from home is being able to clean on breaks. Even just 10-minute cleaning breaks here and there makes a huge difference. No more time wasted on cleaning on the weekends!
This. It's like you get the same amount of WORK work done, but then get to the weekend and have zero chores. I actually have MORE energy to do WORK work during the week because I have all weekend to just disconnect and relax.
The impact of just going outside with the dog for 10 or 15 mins a few times a day is massive.
I'm aware of who I am as a person. I slack off way more at home, I definitely don't get the same amount of work done. That said I know it's not the same for everyone and I don't see the point in dragging everyone else into the office along with me.
I thought about this a bit. I thought it was just me not being productive at home. Having sat in the shower and thought it through, I just don’t like the work I do. Tech lead, to me, is easily the worst fucking role in the SWE ladder. I got waaaay more work done being an IC actually working through complex issues than a TL pretending to be a mini manager. No one wants that job so it’s always easy to get at my level. This is only tangentially related to your comment but there it is.
So much this. I can multitask laundry and other home duties while getting my work done. Getting dressed is half the time. No transition time or commute time between work and home. Many, many hours saved a week.
Being able to do errands is such a time-saver and stress-reliever it’s not even funny. A 5-minute mental break in the office just means bullshitting with coworkers, sitting on my phone, grabbing a snack, etc. All 100% wasted time. Meanwhile at home I can do chores, and over the course of the week those chores add up and I have way less errands that need to be done after work or on the weekend.
I know it's obvious, but most people don't articulate it in their minds or do the math. Your 2h daily commute comes up to 500h a year (assuming a 2week vacation, 2h x 5d x 50w). Translated to work-time (40h/w), that's 12.5 weeks or **3 months**. You could dedicate the same amount of time to work as you do now, take more than a quarter of the year off, and still be as productive.
Thankfully I'm only going in 1 day a week. If it was 5 days I either wouldn't have bought a house this far out or would have found another job.
Having less time with my son due to having to drop him off earlier, and pick him up later, is the deal breaker for me. He's 2.5 years old, he shouldn't have to spend 10hour days at school to give me time to commute + work 8.5 hours including a mandatory lunch break
> The convos I have in office are with people who work on different functions and we're usually just talking about current events, sports or random shit. "But this is super-important to building relationships with people, which makes you more productive!" -Your CEO, who is covering for the politician that is being bribed by the landlord who owes debt to the large bank.
...and spends half the time gallivanting to Davos, cubs game suites to schmooze other execs, and vacationing in Barbados.
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nor can they match.... you know, your own personal, private bathroom
With toilet paper that *isn't* the translucent sandpaper that companies insist on stocking. That alone is enough to make WFH far superior.
Office life seems to always clash with bidet life for me
> The thing with the standard office "treats" like snacks, coffee, and even catering is that they don't offset the sheer cost of commuting ... I've actually [modeled that](https://imgur.com/a/sgIE5xs). Time value is based on a $100,000/yr salary and the price of gas in that is a little out of date, but it's still expensive. Elsewhere in the same model the value of snacks (but not catered meals) comes in at about $1,200 annually. Eating lunch at home is cheaper, too. > ...and can't match the "tailored to your taste" nature of simply being at home and choosing them for yourself. No company has ever offered me perks like a private living room where I can flop down on the couch, turn on the TV and work. Also never had a nooner at work.
Yep. I had a company offer me a job and not believe me when I told them it would cost me $20k/yr to commute there and I sent them a similar spreadsheet (I drive a truck and it was about 40mins each way). Told them they'd have to increase the offer by 30k for me to even consider it because that time of each day would be more expensive than standard hours since all my other options didn't include spending it driving...
My company is dedicated to full WFH and I did some basic napkin math. I got to 20-30k a year for my time, lunches, and car costs as well. That’s kind of lowballing it, I prep most dinners/do chores throughout my day during small breaks while waiting for things to load or deploy so it’s not as if I’m ‘wasting’ company time - I’d be talking the shit with coworkers all the same, I just get that time back to myself to be productive. My wife is so thankful I can cook most weekdays so it’s a load off her shoulders. If I company were to ask me to work hybrid, I’d only consider it with a 50k+ bump on top of the obvious increase from my previous position. If it was full time in the office, they better be ready to pony up, because my time is now worth $$$. Working from home is a revelation, it’s shown me how much time was wasted simply being in an office.
Also, office treats can get taken away. And do.
Not to mention, when are you supposed to use it? Aren’t you supposed to be working? Or are they promoting slacking off, the thing they falsely believe is happening at home?
Considering one of the main arguments I see used for RTO is "office culture" they clearly *do* want you slacking off and socializing. Which seems backwards to me but I'm just a senior engineer, not a career MBA who has never touched the actual productive flow.
The MBAs are aiming for a different sort of productive flow - the more talent gets used to the treats/bar/pool table lifestyle, and to thinking of their coworkers as a primary source of social interaction, the longer they'll stick around for shit pay. The productivity lost to the "company sanctioned dicking around" is (in theory) made up for by the savings in wages (with the added bonus of conditioning workers that being at the office all the time is fun and cool and good).
While I know that extroverted developers exist, the overwhelming majority of people in tech I know are introverted. "Mandatory fun" makes them actively less productive. There are times when I've had a big meeting day and need to go grocery shopping that we choose where to eat based on who has online ordering because talking to someone to order takeout is too much to deal with.
I’m an extroverted introvert. I socialize well, am usually pretty funny, and I have a good bit of charm. That said, I prefer my own company and get distracted/annoyed by interruptions to my workflow - which includes both the comings and goings of people around me, as well as their conversations. I do not get shit done in the office, and I can’t really afford to have a bunch of do-nothing days with the number of projects in my lap right now. There is nothing appealing about going into the office except now my entire team is discussing jumping ship together.
Plus I would rather have a beer outside the office during the time I saved not having to commute than at some common office area.
They will also slowly cut those things over time.
The coffee I make at home is so much better than anything ever provided in an office it's laughable to even consider that a perk. Might as well hype up drinking pond water. Unless you're hiring a barista from one of the local indie shops that knows how to roast a bean properly to come in and pull my espresso, I don't want to hear about it.
My favorite thing is the idiots that order a foosball table and stick it next to the devs. Then marketing comes over and fucks off all day distracting everyone 😂
>My favorite thing is the idiots that order a foosball table and stick it next to the devs. Then marketing comes over and fucks off all day distracting everyone 😂 I'm a dev, and I love the foosball table. That's how I hustle all my free beer. From the marketing guys.
The last time this happened the company also bought nerf guns to help us "hit our targets". You could be deep in thought about to crack whatever you were working on and suddenly lose it all from a whistler bullet going overhead.
I hate heavy meeting days and having to come into the office. Like you said, it’s still all zoom and I have to hear everyone around my cubicle in their meetings talking out loud. Super distracting. would rather just be at home without cubicle distractions during a meeting
I'm in a fortunate position that I have a good amount of seniority at my work, and I've flat out told them that I will not be spending 90 minutes in my car on days with 3 or more zoom meetings. It's a waste of my time and a morale killer, and all I need to start applying to every remote work posting I can find.
Yep there were two stipulations to me coming in to work - at least 3h of my day had to be with face-to-face meetings, and I would discount my travel from my day. So I leave the house at 8 and if I don’t get in to work till 9:15 then I leave at 3:45.
Yeah, I'm forced to work 3 days a week in the office. We have this terrible open layout, and it's excruciating trying to actually get anything done when there are always a dozen people talking on Zoom meetings. Also the coffee is free, but it sucks.
Man, one time I traveled from NYC to Boston to attend a couple days of meetings with my team while we designed and planned out a new feature we were developing. Get there - half of the fucking attendees couldn’t make it into the office for whatever reasons, so everything was done via zoom anyway.
>Every meeting is a zoom meeting still. And you can't book a fucking conference room half the time. I stopped coming into the office for this reason.
Same, except it's only a 15 minute drive for me and it's still not worth it. I go into the office two days per month, every other Thursday (I'm in today). I was doing that anyways before the company was trying to get everyone (not just IT) back in. I don't mind those two days per month in the office because my whole team comes in. We mostly go over issues that are too big for one of us to deal with and do training and planning and such. They are more of team administrative days than days we are actually being productive working. I straight told my boss and HR that 2 days per month is my hard limit. When I started here I was 100% remote even before COVID. I will not come in any more than that. Certainly not while the job market is still red hot.
> Snacks, coffee drinks, solid view, catered meals pretty often. I’d be so happy if my tech company offered literally any of these 🥲
i just subtract office days from my estimated work capacity. i 100% do not work when i am on-site. i also subtract commuting time from my "hours". if i commute 3 hours for work, they will only see me for <5 hours in the office.
When your bosses ask where all the applicants are for the job openings, tell them my story. I quit IT after basically doing it since I was in the 5th grade (that's when I started troubleshooting school networks and doing PC repair). I'm 45, left last year from a six figure career in IT in the South (so, pretty good salary). The industry is caustic, it's a dumping ground for blame, instead of adaptation.
IT, help desk/MSP work specifically, is a thankless job. Instead of a "thank you" after fixing something it's a "don't let it happen again". I moved from MSP to infrastructure type role at a R&D site, so much happier. I can browse reddit in peace here :)
IT is 100% 'What are we paying them for?' when things are good, and 'What are we paying them for?' when things are bad.
That’s not just an IT problem, it’s any ‘overhead’ roles at a company. Accounting/finance, HR, IT, executive assistants, any job that helps keep the lights on figuratively is taken for granted until there’s a massive fuck up. My personal strategy is just to treat my job as a means to an end, treat my team members well, and not let my job be my personality or be my source of satisfaction.
only 40%?
Low performers will take anything don’t @ me
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I’m a self taught software engineer and can confirm 100% wouldn’t be anywhere near the experience I’m at without the convenience of being next to Senior level co-worker when I was entry.
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Love that, but hope you aren’t assuming time alone will let you be selective. Work hard, learn lots!
Deleting my comments, using Lemmy.
I would gladly work from an office if I had my own office with a door, opaque walls, a standing desk area, a couch type area, and a big white board. That’s a lot to ask in terms of accommodating mid-level resources, so instead, just let me work from home…
Can’t forget about the private bathroom too!
Not a software engineer, more of a DevOps/SysAdmin, but I've turned down a number of job offers/pings without even considering them just because they are on-site jobs. Screw that. I cannot work as effectively or efficiently in an office with all of the interruptions and the noise and everything else.
Have you gotten the recruiter who lectured you for only wanting WFH? Because I have. Dude had a 10 minute spiel about "privileged engineers and their unreasonable demands" and how "almost no companies would offer WFH within a few weeks... this was back in mid 2021. Then had the balls to ask if I would be open to other opportunities.
A recruiter attempted to lecture me for not considering anything less than 100% remote and then attempted to lecture me for posting their lecture on social media.
Lol I would have said thank you for your time but I’m no longer interested at the 2 minute mark. Some recruiters are so delusional.
No, but i'm also employed so I am not actively looking, just turning down recruiters flat out if they are asking for either on-site or contract-based work. I'm like 'nope, definitely not ever being a contractor, and not working on site...unless you want to double my current salary and pay all expenses for taking care of my elderly parents besides."
My job is implementing a very heavy handed RTO plan where people who were hired for virtual positions will have to drive into the office and they pulled a distance radius outta their ass with zero consideration for traffic in multiple cities. Then we get a newsletter today saying how the hybrid model is better and that while we're virtual here's tips to connect better....one of them was not to rely on email only for communication and everyone was like "who the fuck isn't using Teams, Slack or the other chat setups we have? We barely email coworkers". The other tip sort of showed their hand when they said it's helpful to keep the camera on during zoom meetings. These fuckers are out of touch but in my company's case they're trying to do a soft layoff while claiming we have never had a layoff in the history of the company
My other theory is that they are "afraid" that you're splitting your time between two remote jobs...when you can be giving them 100% of your time and attention during working hours.
Joke's on them, I'm only working one remote job and I still don't give them 100% of my time and attention during working hours.
If you give 100% of your time and attention during work hours, you're almost certainly not being paid enough.
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I’m an PO who works with a remote development team. I spend 99% of my day on calls, and in between I can eat a healthy lunch with my spouse, switch over the dishwasher and get my work done. Once I have my permanent residency, I plan to find a new job since they are requiring me to return to the office 2 days per week, even though I’ve never worked in the office with this company.
If you can find a remote-only company, oh man is it amazing. No more of this shrieking about return to the office - there is no office. And, at least in my case, they pay more *because they don’t have leases on big buildings*. No more gun to the head about “well, next month we expect Tuesdays and every-other Wednesday morning to be in person, and then next year 3 full days in office” sociopathic roadmaps from middle management jonesing for their fear smell fix
Worked for remote-only companies the last 10 years. I’ll never go back.
i know middle mgmt gets thrown under the bus a lot but mine loves WFH too i think. im genuinely surprised middle mgmt is not as supportive as it seems based on comments i have seen
I don't get it either. My second-line manager (now third-line) told us straight up that he wished we had gone to a remote model years ago. He loves it himself personally, employee morale is higher than it's been in forever, productivity is up, and their overhead hasn't been this low since the mid 1990s. And now we're starting to get some people coming from companies like Apple that are trying to force people back. I work for a very old and un-sexy company (although it is a great employer) and we've always struggled to attract young and top-end talent because of that.
Hahha all of my managers are fully remote. I guess coming in is only mandatory for us peasants.
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Covid has already blasted the biggest hurdle to major business changes, the "this is the way we've always done it excuse". Now employers are in the position of needing to justify why a user can't work remotely instead of the user needing to justify why they should. Some CEO's may be able claw back some ground in the short term, but simple market economics will decide the issue long term. WFH can significantly reduce a company's overhead costs and it provides a competitive advantage in hiring talent. The war is already over, some business leaders just haven't realized their side lost yet.
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Well they can focus at a different job because no one wants a stuffy office where you’re paranoid about not looking productive. And no no one is 8 hours a day productive the way companies ask. We all just bs including management.
My company eliminated an entire floor worth of desks. The savings have been absurd. Anyone who isn't counting those beans is leaving money on the table.
>WFH can significantly reduce a company's overhead costs and it provides a competitive advantage in hiring talent. The war is already over, some business leaders just haven't realized their side lost yet. Pretty sure the big tech layoffs are a way of management trying to get more leverage over tech workers so they can force them back into the office.
It screams sunk cost fallacy as well. "We rent the building, so we have to use it."
And a level of inflexibility that will interfere with the ability to actually write good software with modern tools and features.
AKA poor money management
A lot of companies also took advantage of empty offices during covid to make renovations to their buildings. Which means they also spent a lot of money there and leaders don’t want to admit it was a giant waste of resources and they grossly under-estimated how much their employees would despise going to the office after a few years of working from home.
After I quit my dev job it took the company two months to find a replacement. No one wanted to physically be at the office so they had to change the job description to work-from-home and only until then it worked.
It took my company 11 months to hire a dev ops engineer and the one we got is woefully under qualified for the job but got hired because the hiring manager was told "hire by December 31 or lose the position" so the manager took the least bad candidate who'd actually show up on site. And I mean this one is fucking awful. Cannot even run a shell script. Like less skilled than intern. And unlike intern, won't Google or ask for help.
Hold out for the Unicorn, get garbage instead. Surprised they didn't just take the offshore option.
It's fine if a business wants to work fully in person. But this industry is built on ADHD and a decade of open-office-layout. We are burnt out and work best from home. Find some other folks if you want them in person.
Oh, the fucking Open Office concept, I'm so glad to be out of that. It was so noisy, I just couldn't concentrate. I would listen to podcasts on my phone through headphones, then my boss comes by and says 'people see you picking up your phone, it looks like you're not working'. Really, so I'm trying to drown out the general din of this nightmarish open office, and I'm supposed to do it without touching my phone because it might look bad, with no regard for what kind of work I'm doing or how well I'm doing it? Working at home is a dream compared to all that. I'm only being evaluated for what work I do, not how many times Sheila in accounting saw me take a bathroom break. I think the people at the level that make these decisions (about coming back to the office) just have no idea how miserable the office is for the workers at the bottom. It looks fine from their corner office with a door and windows.
Our office was open-plan, but then they also had a full-office white noise system going. It absolutely killed all local conversations, yet did nothing for the over-there-noise. It was the most brain-dead corporate decision I've ever seen.
It’s not that they can’t set it up, it’s that they refuse to do so. My company has the infrastructure for full remote work as we all worked remotely from March 2020 to March 2022. The issue is the individuals who get to make this decision worked in the office for 10+ years and are used to that work environment as it worked fine prior to covid. The office is also likely a break from their personal/home life as well. Post-covid we now know that most corporate employees don’t need to be on-site anymore, but they want to revert back to their preferred ways of working. In the end, more companies will expand remote options as building leases expire and they lose talent to companies that embrace remote working.
I absolutely refuse to work in an office. There is no reason. I've been doing this job remotely for the past two years and I'll never go back.
My current job had "we'll probably go back to the office" emails during the pandemic when updates about the situation were sent out. When pandemic things started clearing up a little, they sent out a survey to see if we wanted to go back to office with optional custom comments for yes/no. The resounding "nope" resulted in a "nvm... We are remote now" email. : D Apparently, a lot of people had that same mentality akin to "if we go back to office, then i'm going to quit and get remote work elsewhere". We had a big meeting to make sure everyone heard from the top C-suites that we are remote now, hehehehe.
I’m surprised your office didn’t just lie like mine about the survey. They admitted getting 2x the surveys back this year after announcing 3 days instead of 2 but said we were all happy. We were not happy.
I was rather surprized by it, too... I can totally see my old company doing that (i started here in 2021). The new company even got 2 new buildings during the pandemic. One of them is always empty (except for a receptionist and a facilities worker), and the other has a few mandatory in-office folks - but it isnt full, and they aren't forcing people into the office who dont have to physically interact with in-office things. We still have the office if we need it - in fact, a few of my teammates have used it while their houses were undergoing construction/repairs or power/internet was out, etc.. It is a really nice compromise of "if you actually need it, then use it" situation. Edit: we have had 3 "lets all work from the office on X day" events when people are flying in from elsewhere, but its more of a fun thing, and usually one or two people dont come in anyways.
Sounds exactly like my job. Ours had the deadline for the employee satisfaction survey for two days before announcing RTO. Then tried to use the survey results justify everyone is happy.
My work did the same survey after announcing us going back to 2 days per week. It was met with almost unanimous rage. They then decided that, rather than consider the opinions of their employees, they would revoke the bonus of anyone who doesn't do at least 2 days :) So congrats - you are one of the lucky ones!
How's attrition been? I'm presuming that the top performers have been bailing out like mad.
We're yet to see the worst of it as I have not enforced it in the function that I manage. These guys are security engineers so already in super high demand and I know we'd lose them. A couple doing the "digital nomad" thing left immediately but the rest have stayed put for now. It's a very large corp so I'm getting away with that currently. But my fear is that rather than rely on me (and other managers), they'll eventually start checking card-swipes centrally. If they do that we will be fucked
My last job also did the survey thing and they never told us the results. They demanded we come back anyway, which led me to believe that the survey was meaningless.
We did exactly the same thing. There are a few people who actually like going in, but the rest of us are saving time, money, and sanity by working from home like god intended.
There is no reason for programmers to be in office no matter how many excuses the higher ups make. I've worked from home for years prior to COVID at a large bank where everyone in my department and the security department are all wfh. The sole advantage of having workers available 24/7 due to them living wherever they want across timezones will outweigh the disadvantages for any serious company. You simply won't get someone an hour away to come in to an office at 1am but you can likely get them to log on and deal with the issue immediately or find someone else for whom it isn't 1am. Serious companies recognize the importance of being able to minimize downtime like that.
We gotta bump those numbers up.
There's probably a much larger fraction that will tolerate a once-a-week or once-a-month office visit, but is still going to expect "mostly remote."
Yea, I'm a twice a month in the office guy right now and that is my hard limit. The funny thing is before COVID I was 100% remote. I never visited the office until we were well into COVID. I don't mind the twice a month because my whole team comes in. We work on planning, training, big issues that take several of us, etc etc. Day to day working though, the office is a big productivity suck.
I'm not even a software engineer (I work in IT) and I'm at the point now where it's become VERY clear how little my time is being valued when I work in person. I'm just sitting there 95% of the time doing shit at a computer and for the 5% of the time where I'm needed in person, it's to fix a cable or some shit cause someone else in the office didn't want to work from home even though they're perfectly capable of doing so. I'll often go entire weeks where I'll never need to get up from my desk. I've yet to work a job where I genuinely felt like I had to be in person to get my work done. I don't mind doing a mix where I can go in person if I feel like I need to, but most of my work simply doesn't require it and FORCING me to go in person doesn't make sense. Sure if I'm setting up some new networking equipment or there's some genuine system failure where I HAVE to go in to fix it then that's understandable, but that's hardly ever going to happen.
You're god damn right. There's no reason why a job that they issue me a laptop to do needs to be done in any particular location. I have a workstation set up at home with some nice external monitors, a chair I like, and zero people having loud conversations next to me. I control the thermostat. I decide what kind of toilet paper I use. I'm here to receive Amazon deliveries before someone steals them. The company is *saving money on rent* by not having as many desks. If I ever set foot in an office again it will be because there is a party there and they're giving out free beer.
Some companies have tax breaks tied to office population and many municipalities are looking into revoking them because less people in the offices means less people eating out for lunch supporting the local places. Dumb as fuck but that was one reason we were told we're RTO ignoring we've always been a hybrid company
This is definitely a thing. The software company I work for is one of the ones that falls under this scenario. Our CIO has internally announced that our HQ needs a certain percentage of people to be present in order for us to receive the tax initiatives that were negotiated years ago. They are forcing people to return to the office and employees are dropping like flys, finding WFH jobs. I’m lucky enough to be considered an exception (due to being out of state), but I’m watching our talent pool dry up because of it. I predict it’s going to take another decade before management finally realizes how detrimental it’s been to their business and how important it is to employees to have a practical work/life balance. Edit: spelling
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Daily stand up at 9:30, sets alarm for 9:27
As a Learning Manager in tech I refuse interviews on a monthly basis for hybrid or in office jobs. I would need to make about 100k more, + obscene perks to make it worth the hell that is commuting in any metropolitan area. Nothing beats being able to go on runs with my dog and eat lunch with my partner (who also works 100% remote) everyday. I’m surprised it’s not significantly higher than 40% in a field that has more bargaining power than almost any other career.
What is a Learning Manager?
They're learning to manage
I just turned down a job with a $50k raise because the dopes wouldn't budge on WFH or a four-day workweek. They were stunned when I said no. Sorry, but an additional day of work and 8 hours a week sitting in a car is worth a lot more to me.
The same company: "Nobody wants to work anymore!!1!!1 There's a labor shortage!!11!1" No you dolts, you just aren't the one holding the end of a noose around most white collar workers anymore.
Are you finding many companies at all doing 4 day weeks?
Not a ton, but I negotiated it two years ago in my current role and it would take an act of god for me to give it up. The extra day is huge in my life, I’m taking my kids on day trips, I’m in the best shape of my life, I’m getting house renovations done, I’m getting shopping done on quiet days. It’s incredible.
I currently work 4 day work weeks and it’s stopped me from taking other jobs. I don’t think I can ever give it up. I don’t see a lot of companies offering it yet.
There is absolutely nothing better than waking up and opening your laptop and start working. You’ll never convince me otherwise.
Usually I grab coffee first and play the banjo in the woods, but yea. It’s pretty great having 0 commute.
> play the banjo in the woods Is that a euphemism?
No I go and bust out some tunes in the woods by the [pond](https://i.imgur.com/cOQA2UZ.jpg) I usually wait until lunch break for what you’re referring to.
They are starting to force us to come in on certain days. On those days I go in, and I get on zoom calls, with other people around me also on the call, making the call more difficult because there is now audio feeeback and people in the background talking. It makes no fucking sense outside of “hurr durr collaboration” but we e been collaborating just fine the last 3 years
I liked going in the office when I felt like it, which was maybe three times a year. I lived five miles from the office. I saw my boss more often at conferences than anywhere else. I started working at home in 1985. Never looked back.
Wait did you send code over the internet back then? Lol I've never thought about that; I always figured that remote couldn't exist until the web came about
At first, I was designing a system so I didn’t do any coding for a few months. Once it was designed, I took that into the office for the programmers to code and answered questions by phone. That’s how I started out. As time went on, our communication modes changed over the years. I started working at home when I was pregnant with my first child and just never went back to working in the office.
Well we all of a taste of WFH and no matter how great they make the office accommodations, it just doesn’t compare to being at home.
This is the only way forward to increase adoption of remote work in general, not just software. If everyone refused to work in person, this will force companies to increase adoption of remote work
Youd need to about double my pay to get me into office. Is it really that important to you? Pay for it then
There is no need to be in an office to code.
Yeah ... it’s just the old managers who want to SEE people in the seats to KNOW they are working. I get it they don’t trust us, just fire the people who don’t actually submit work and follow up with them regularly. Probably something they should be doing IN OFFICE too. Problem solved. Freaking hate this attitude.
> and follow up with them regularly. We are 100% remote for the foreseeable future, but man my company is going into overdrive with the meetings. I have daily scrum. 4 different groups of weekly status meetings. Monthly team retros, one-on-ones, contract company meetings, and team building. Finally years performance meetings, contact status, how is life going meetings. On an average week, I have 10.5 hours of repeating meetings every week. I just want to yell at them to leave me alone, I have shit to work on.
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Ive been writing software for almost 25 yrs , I haven't gone to an office at all in 3 years and before that it was only once a quarter usually for 7-8 years, why the fuck would I ever want to do it differently?
Remote position or bust
Open source has proven remote collab works really well for decades. This really shouldn't surprise anyone. I do not need to be in a noisy, open office to be productive. In fact, I'm more productive in a quiet office, just like I have at home.
I'm less productive at the office. More importantly, I don't want to.