[HN Gopher] Silicon Valley offices less empty than other regions
___________________________________________________________________
Silicon Valley offices less empty than other regions
Author : gumby
Score : 88 points
Date : 2022-12-29 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.paloaltoonline.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.paloaltoonline.com)
| api wrote:
| Wasn't it a supply constrained market before? So now there is
| just a bit of slack but less than other markets they were
| previously less crazy.
| xchip wrote:
| Sales people always claim their product is in high demand. Same
| here.
| jayzalowitz wrote:
| Longer term leases.
|
| Its gonna hit hard before 2030.
| randomopining wrote:
| You mean they aren't gonna renew en masse?
| bushbaba wrote:
| Disagree Silicon Valley is home to many hardware, medical, and
| other industries which require labs or equipment that requires
| in person work.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| This is what makes modern Nimbyism even more destructive.
|
| We're heading to a new urban death spiral. With no commuters and
| empty office building. Residential density could salve some of
| the issues that creates for cities. But nimbyism will of course
| prevent that, and leave cities the decaying while stodgy citizens
| delay any solution and argue against density.
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| No commuters? What city are you referring to? In SF, Muni is
| packed along my commute to the city. Probably there's not as
| much commuting, but there's certainly quite a bit.
|
| Also, more dense housing actually usually means less commuting.
| That's one of the reasons I generally support it. People living
| closer to work means less commute time resulting in less carbon
| as well.
| ghaff wrote:
| My observation in Boston is that driving in by car at rush
| hour is as bad as it has ever been. Commuter rail ridership
| seems to be significantly down relative to pre-pandemic so
| some of the traffic probably comes from that, but it's still
| very heavy so a lot of people are obviously still commuting
| in.
| gumby wrote:
| I think we could easily go back to the days (not so long ago)
| when SF was a bedroom community for SV and working in SF was
| the reverse commute. SF could become a fun place to live and
| play again.
| banach wrote:
| I am still waiting for companies to realize that offices in the
| pre-pandemic sense are a completely unnecessary expense, a drag
| on productivity and a competitive disadvantage for the
| organizations that keep clinging on to this idea. It's easy to
| talk about the importance of meeting face-to-face, when you
| ignore the opportunity cost of enabling this versus scaling down
| to more up-to-date spaces that make things like workshops, larger
| meetings and pair programming truly comfortable, and reinvesting
| the savings into higher salaries and other benefits. Are the
| management teams in our industry just waiting for someone to pull
| the trigger, or are they hoping that no-one will do so, and that
| everyone will just forget that the pandemic taught us how
| meaningless commuting to work is?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I am still waiting for companies to realize that offices in
| the pre-pandemic sense are a completely unnecessary expense, a
| drag on productivity and a competitive disadvantage for the
| organizations that keep clinging on to this idea.
|
| When their top investors and board members are often also top
| investors and board members of the firms that own the
| commercial real estate, it may be hard for them to come to that
| realization.
| kcplate wrote:
| I am waiting for the exact opposite. I love WFH, my team loves
| WFH. All of us will tell you how much more productive we are
| and Individually we might be. As a team...we are definitely not
| more productive and no one wants to say that uncomfortable part
| out loud.
|
| Sooner or later that truth will trickle upwards and we will all
| be back to a commute and cubicles.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| > Sooner or later that truth will trickle upwards and we will
| all be back to a commute and cubicles.
|
| This very might well be the case for your company. However,
| globally, there are advantages for the employer, and
| disadvantages for the employee that need to be accounted for.
| I believe we will start to see salaries diverge between
| remote and in-office work to adjust for whatever particular
| situation the company is facing.
|
| Advantages for Company: - A lower salary can be offered. -
| Employees are less Geo-constrained - Less office space to
| rent
|
| Disadvantages for Employee: - Harder for junior employees to
| learn - Social isolation - Lower salary is possible
|
| The situation is likely to be variable from company to
| company, I have a feeling that soon "remote work" will be an
| integral part of the identity of each job posting.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| So you're saying everyone is more productive when WFH
| individually, but somehow the team as a whole isn't.
|
| Could you please explain how that works?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Maybe just a management issue, but my team is full of
| people being really productive at their pet project. When
| it comes to accomplishing business goals, less so. An
| effective team needs to effectively work together, and that
| largely is not happening with remote.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| I understand but having worked across multiple remote
| teams something tells me it's not WFH to blame, rather
| how it's implemented in your company.
|
| We're doing exceptionally well and my friends from other
| tech shops have similar experience.
| qqtt wrote:
| Seems like the entire WFH/RTO conversation is based around
| feelings, anecdotes, and personal opinions. For every person
| saying WFH has been a game changer, you have a person saying RTO
| is essential for some reason or other.
|
| This is one of the few times I've seen the entire tech sector
| basically collectively raise their hands and give up on any form
| of data driven analysis, and go whole turkey into personal
| conviction as the only guiding factor.
|
| This seems like an area ripe for assessing with metrics. FANG
| companies onboarded hundreds of thousands of employees over the
| past 2 years, in addition to their existing workforce. And yet, I
| haven't seen any CEO anywhere give a compelling case one way or
| the other with data backed conclusions.
|
| This entire conversation just devolves into "trust me bro"
| anecdotes and personal opinion, even at the CEO level. It is
| downright bizarre to me.
| nickfromseattle wrote:
| This is a good point.
|
| What kind of metrics do you think could be used to evaluate WFH
| versus in-office productivity? Any initial ideas on the pros &
| cons of the metrics you would use?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| General strategies for how to manage employees have always been
| driven more by gut feeling and emotion than anything else.
|
| People rarely asked for data before adopting "agile" practices,
| for example. Often they tweaked those practices in ways that
| would have invalidated any data anyways. They just hopped on a
| trend.
| benatkin wrote:
| Probably a good thing to ask ChatGPT.
| AntiRemoteWork wrote:
| [dead]
| spritefs wrote:
| What's this? An SV newspaper posting copium about office space in
| SV?
| sylens wrote:
| I wonder how much of this might be due to every member of a team
| being more likely to work out of the same office in a SV located
| company than in other companies.
|
| The reason I've been so bullish on remote work coming out of the
| pandemic is because multiple jobs I had before the pandemic were
| very much remote jobs, with the added requirement of having to
| perform them from an office building 45-60 minutes away from me.
| My team was distributed across New York, Florida, Texas, and
| California, so all of our meetings were using Teams or Zoom
| anyway. The fact that I had to ride a train twice a day just to
| take those zoom calls from a local office was always an
| annoyance.
| gumby wrote:
| > The fact that I had to ride a train twice a day just to take
| those zoom calls from a local office was always an annoyance.
|
| This. My gf's company mandated back to the office in mid
| January 2022 so she went in on the first day...and was the only
| member of her group to do so. In fact most of the group was in
| other locations anyway, so she just zoomed from work that day.
|
| I remember even before that, working for FAANG the office
| complexes were so big that most of her meetings ended up on
| Zoom anyway even if the participants were elsewhere on the same
| campus.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > The fact that I had to ride a train twice a day just to take
| those zoom calls from a local office was always an annoyance.
|
| This exactly. I was already working more or less remotely
| before the pandemic, but from an office 1 hour from my
| apartment. I often worked from home anyway and nobody noticed
| other than my manager, who usually was also working in a
| different office from me (1 hour drive away) but who insisted
| that I come into the office whenever possible. Covid gave me
| the chance to stop wasting my time and energy on the train just
| to keep up appearances for the person who did my annual
| performance reviews.
|
| My current job is a bit different. Our team is "global", but
| several of my coworkers actually work in the office near where
| I live, so going into the office is actually a nice experience.
| Also my commute is 1/3 what it used to be, which helps.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Same here. My teams are primarily in Ottawa and Halifax, as
| well as Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, and few stragglers all over
| the place. Going to office will allow you to talk in person to
| some of the people but ends up creating massive insulated
| islands. Remote has put us all on same page and made us
| communicate, resulting in pervasive awareness.
|
| Operationally we are distinctly more effective remote and I
| shudder for the inevitable return to office where it'll be "you
| guys in Halifax can't see this on the 1993 broken polycom
| speaker phone, but Claus is drawing an updated architecture.
| Sorry you can't hear him he's also far from phone, we'll catch
| you up later " (they never do)
| Tade0 wrote:
| I'll do you one better: I've been in a project where our PM was
| in South Carolina, the bulk of the team in Poland and our
| single Indian teammate phoned in from Hyderabad.
|
| We were all working remotely at the time, but before the
| pandemic the Polish team would commute to the office.
| scruple wrote:
| I ran a team where myself and the TPM were local in SoCal, QA
| was remote in NorCal, and developers were in Texas, Chicago,
| Argentina, and the Netherlands. It worked surprisingly well
| but that boiled down to 80% having the right set of
| personalities.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Just saw on CNBC that San Francisco office vancancy was 3.7% in
| Q4 2019 and just hit a record 27.2% for Q4 2022.
| gumby wrote:
| San Francisco is the worst performer in this report.
| Unsurprisingly, Silicon Valley is doing much better than SF.
| cadence- wrote:
| Most office leases are for 5 to 10 years periods. I'm not
| surprised they are not seeing huge changes yet. It would be more
| interesting to find out how much of that space is actually
| occupied by meatbags. Most offices I went to this year were
| basically empty chairs.
| yardie wrote:
| Ahem, "the average amount of space per lease is decreasing across
| all types of commercial property."
|
| Fewer, new commercial projects going up, and smaller office
| sizes. Vacancy is down if you count the number of leases signed
| and not the size of the property. So still going down.
| gumby wrote:
| The actual linked report does the calculation by area, not
| lease count.
| huntsman wrote:
| The vacancy rate of offices looks low because the big tech
| companies are still "occupying" them, but if go into many of them
| and they still look like ghost towns. Much more that offices in
| other locations.
|
| This feels unsustainable.
| lazide wrote:
| It definitely is unsustainable. A lot of wil-e-coyote running
| off the cliff type of stuff going on. And hey, maybe some
| places will connect with a cliff on the other side. But I
| wouldn't want to be in the commercial real estate space right
| now.
|
| About 90% of every office and co-working space is empty now,
| all day, every day here. It's only slightly busier than during
| Covid when it was 99%.
|
| Light industrial and retail (strip mall type stuff) is doing
| well and super busy however.
| macNchz wrote:
| Here in NYC I've been to a couple of coworking spaces in the
| past 6 months and was surprised to find them downright
| bustling, I had trouble finding a quiet space to work. There
| are definitely serious problems in commercial real estate
| here, but the coworking situation was unexpected to me.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| The thing about coworking is that, for employees at least,
| it is an actual solution to some of the problems with
| remote and in-office work, as opposed to the "hybrid" model
| which manages to be the worst of all worlds. With
| coworking, you can still have more flexibility to live
| where you'd like as opposed to being bound to a specific
| office and the often high COL and long commutes that come
| with it. Coworking allows one to still separate their home
| from their office, which some prefer, and it also allows
| employees to get out of the house and engage with others,
| socialize, and engage with their community/city, but you
| aren't forced to do this at your work which will always be
| tainted by the financial implications of the
| employee/employer relationship that loom over it all.
| blevin wrote:
| One succesful mode of applying coworking spaces seems to be
| less for heads-down focus time and more for periodic get-
| together time for teams. These spaces seem not very good as
| a full-time micro-office due to the noise issues you
| mention... but as a place to go whiteboard or empathize
| they seem quite useful. Bonus if there are nearby
| interesting excursion options, food courts, recreation,
| etc. and multiple easy-ish commute options. Part of
| economic development seems to be exploring options for how
| to dis- and re-aggregate services like this, providing more
| and smaller transitions across the tradeoff landscape.
| lazide wrote:
| Makes sense. I'm in the middle of finding a standalone
| office so I can do actual meetings and be productive, but
| it's tempting to keep the co-working space for exactly
| what you describe. One day here, another day there type
| of thing for when those things are helpful.
| ghaff wrote:
| A business writer friend of mine told me a month or so ago
| that, based on a sampling of key swipes, office occupancy is
| down about a third compared to pre-pandemic although I'm sure
| it varies a lot.
| gumby wrote:
| From the article this appears to be the case for san
| francisco (20+% vacancy) but not for Silicon Valley.
| ghaff wrote:
| Although commercial occupancy rates are a different
| measurement from how many seats are filled on an average
| day.
| lazide wrote:
| Yeah, re: my 'lights are on, but nobody home' anecdote
| from the peninsula - I'm specifically referring to butts
| in seats. Said seats are currently very relaxed and well
| aired out compared to typical.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| About a third or to a third? Regardless, at my place of
| work ("hybrid"), I would be shocked if badge swipes were
| 10% of pre-pandemic levels.
| ghaff wrote:
| I can't find the reference but, as I recall it was a drop
| from 65% pre-pandemic (that may seem low because pre-
| pandemic a lot of people still traveled or otherwise
| weren't in the office on a typical day) to around 40%
| these days. I'm told my workplace is quite a bit lower as
| well.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Colloquially this was known as "extend and pretend" during
| the GFC.
| gregmac wrote:
| My office (near Toronto) was up for lease renewal about 1.5
| years ago. Pre-pandemic about 50% of people were working from
| home at least some of the time, and by 2021 there were maybe
| 2-3 people in the office regularly (in a space that could
| easily have 45). The company was debating what to do but did
| want some physical space, and possibly would have just stayed
| considering the investment in build-out, networking
| (including at least a rack of internal servers and other
| infrastructure, with dedicated fibre to other company
| datacenters), video conference rooms, etc. What I heard was
| the building was trying to nearly double the rent, so this
| made a pretty easy decision and the place was closed. Servers
| were migrated to other locations, and everything else was
| shipped to other offices, given to employees, sold or
| scrapped.
|
| Now it's 6 months later, and last time I drove by it still
| has our old sign up, and I can see online the entire space is
| still available to lease. Seems silly to risk it in the
| current market and take $0 instead of keep a quiet,
| established tenant.. but what do I know.
| slaw wrote:
| There are malls empty for 20 years, offices could be also empty
| for 20 years.
| modeless wrote:
| Those malls don't have paying tenants while they're empty
| though. Big tech companies aren't going to keep paying leases
| they don't need forever.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| They are if they have contracts specifying that the must do
| that. Or possibly can negotiate a payout, but I imagine it
| won't be cheap.
| ffggffggj wrote:
| Musk is doing this now by holding up a refinancing of
| Twitter's building by defaulting on the rent. Anyone with
| a big enough war chest can just stop paying, drag it out
| in court, and wait the owners out. And tech companies
| have some of the biggest war chests.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> And tech companies have some of the biggest war
| chests._
|
| Most tech companies do, but if reports of Twitter's
| finances are to be believed, they do not.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| That is a good point. The people who invested in long term
| leases in the late 90s in malls went bankrupt but the malls
| mostly stayed around. I assume the same thing will happen
| with office space. Demolishing the building is expensive,
| might as well keep the lights on and wait to see if someone
| wants the space for offices or storage or whatever.
| shostack wrote:
| How has the commercial office space market been fairing? What's
| the play if one thinks it will crater?
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Good. Maybe we can mass retrofit old office space into new
| housing. I know there are issues with office buildings not
| having the electricity and plumbing or lighting for proper
| residential, but I'm sure there are a lot of budding architects
| working on the problem.
|
| It would be great for cities if we had a massive influx of
| relatively affordable housing.
| nerdponx wrote:
| It's ridiculous to even consider this in New York, where they
| could have just been building normal apartments instead of
| luxury condo towers for the last 10 years.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| What's the difference between "normal apartments" and
| "luxury condo towers"?
| nerdponx wrote:
| Price, mostly. Luxury amenities are a consequence
| thereof.
|
| However you can't just blame it on demand. These are $16
| million condos we are talking about. Functionally they
| are entirely different goods from apartments intended to
| be inhabited as a primary residence by people who are not
| extravagantly wealthy. Moreover, vacancy rates for luxury
| apartments were high before Covid, and remain high now,
| even while the rest of the city continues to deal with
| brutally low vacancy rates in all other housing
| categories.
|
| So the situation is a little more subtle than "low
| supply, therefore high prices" and warrants further
| scrutiny.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Nah, gotta create more piggy banks for the billionaire
| class.
| kibwen wrote:
| This doesn't deserve to be downvoted, it is a perfectly
| apt description of many of NYC's newest skyscrapers.
| gumby wrote:
| I was a big fan of this but it's harder than it sounds. After
| all, we all know of some great commercial conversions from
| prior generations (most of the southern part of Manhattan,
| for example).
|
| Unfortunately the big modern office towers often aren't
| constructed in a way that supports apartment conversion.
| There are lots of offices in those buildings with no windows,
| and all the service(i.e bathrooms) are in the core. Retail
| space is often worse in this regard, especially in malls. The
| renovation costs often end up higher than demolishing and
| building anew.
|
| I still think you're on the right track though, it's just
| that the obvious fix is harder than it looks. But I do
| believe cities are in for a great renaissance of mixed-use
| buildings.
| plasticchris wrote:
| Maybe apartments are the wrong paradigm - this sounds
| perfect for creating something like a dormitory with rooms
| on the perimeter and shared bathrooms.
| aorloff wrote:
| AB 2011 purports to address this. I don't have confidence it
| will move the needle.
| icapybara wrote:
| Much of Silicon Valley is hardware work that literally can't be
| done from home.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| In 2023? Do you have statistics? I want to believe, but isn't
| it mostly web shops of one type or another, like everywhere
| else on the planet?
| iron2disulfide wrote:
| The "Silicon" part of Silicon Valley is still very much
| relevant. Intel, AMD, nVidia, etc. all have major presences
| down there. There's also a multi-billion dollar industry
| supporting silicon design shops in various ways, and they're
| all in SV too.
| gumby wrote:
| The Valley is mostly tech, while SF is more the web shops. SF
| didn't even have much tech exposure at all until the dotcom
| boom; in 2000 it was still mostly old line industries (a
| stock exchange!) and music and other art. People in tech
| lived up there and commuted to work in the Valley.
| icapybara wrote:
| I don't have statistics. It's in the name though, "silicon"
| valley. The South Bay is home to the semiconductor industry
| and its ecosystem.
|
| My own company has about 15k employees in San Jose, and we're
| all back to the office full time. Many of us can't do our
| jobs from home, it's hardware work.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| That's also my perception.
|
| Just by looking at buildings and job offerings, there seems to
| be more hardware in the South Bay, vs. the peninsula or SF. Not
| sure about the Oakland area.
|
| The article defines Silicon Valley as "Santa Clara and San
| Mateo counties, along with the cities of Fremont and Newark." I
| would have split out the first two.
| [deleted]
| zephrx1111 wrote:
| I feel someday, going to office will become a privilege.
| outside1234 wrote:
| I technically work from my Silicon Valley office - but haven't
| been there in two years.
| ghaff wrote:
| You have to actually look at person-days in an office. How many
| people are technically assigned to that office is pretty much
| meaningless. I haven't been been into my official office in 3
| years (although I've very occasionally gone into another couple
| company offices).
| rconti wrote:
| So, official vacancy rates from a leasing perspective. This
| doesn't cover leased space that nobody's using or that's
| partially occupied. My understanding is that office leasing tends
| to be longer term than residential, though I'm not sure what kind
| of early termination provisions might be typical that would add
| signal back to the noise.
|
| Some reasons I can think these stats might be misleading:
|
| * Long term leases signed recently (pre-pandemic) that are still
| in effect (though now that I realize we're almost at the 3 year
| mark, I suppose this is wearing off). So younger companies that
| just got started in SV might disproportionately skew our stats.
|
| * Companies prioritizing some cost saving measures (layoffs) over
| others (real estate).
|
| "Legitimate" reasons I can think of that SV offices might be more
| in-demand than other places:
|
| * Younger average workforce (?). Anecdotally, younger workers
| prefer the office, and it feels like younger talent flock to SV
| early in their career (and/or tech companies discriminate against
| older workers). Younger workers might prefer the office for all
| sorts of reasons; social life, fewer fears about illness, etc.
| Which brings us to...
|
| * Real estate costs mean that fewer people can afford a home
| office / more of these younger workers share apartments or small
| homes, so the office is a necessary space to spread out. (plus
| someone else pays for the A/C and snacks!)
|
| * More need for dual-income / more dual-income "professional"
| workers, combined with small housing, means more need for space
| just as in point #2 above.
| photonbeam wrote:
| If they provided a private room with a closable door, then I
| might be tempted to commute.
|
| Open office means the home office instead
| amalgamated_inc wrote:
| Correct answer
| JoshTko wrote:
| Could this be partially explained by longer leases in SV on avg
| prior to Covid? Meaning that actual utilization of office in SF
| is much lower, but some tenants were locked in longer contracts
| which have yet to expire.
| black_13 wrote:
| [dead]
| kilotaras wrote:
| Per TFA: *Vacancy rate is lower* than in other region.
|
| At least for MANGA I work at SV office is way emptier than London
| one. Which is not surprising if you take commute time difference
| into account.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Seems like a spin from Silicon Valley Real Estate companies and
| Mayors
| repeekad wrote:
| People who love remote work seem to be senior, well established
| employees who were already fully ramped up and had a social
| foundation in SV before the pandemic. I left my entire life
| behind after college to relocate to SV; I loved working with
| talented engineers and gained so much experience and mentorship
| in 2019. But remote work was isolating and lonely, mentorship
| went to zero, and it has caused me a lot of stress realizing that
| remote work is never going away. It was very sad, but I had to
| leave SV behind to find a career with people who cared about my
| success again, rather than preferring remote work for themselves
| at the expense of less experience engineers having to ping and
| zoom for every question, with less authentic relationships being
| formed. Remote work might seem like employees vs the boss, but
| there are people like me who actually loved their jobs, and now
| can only do them through a screen alone in a bedroom.
| jasmer wrote:
| Great point. And I'll bet $100 that people wouldn't mind the
| office if it was literally across the street.
|
| We don't always 'hate the commute' but what if you could just
| pop in and out as needed? No waiting? Pick up the kids, drop
| them at home, then back to the office if you want? Home for
| lunch? No brutal traffic?
|
| And - people need their own spaces. The cost of squeezing in
| everyone on a bench is being born a bit in people not wanting
| to come back. I literally could not get anything done.
| almost_usual wrote:
| People who love remote work usually have families. Time is a
| very limited resource when you have kids. Commuting and
| socializing with coworkers at lunch or at happy hours gets
| deprioritized.
| pcurve wrote:
| I'm in my 40s, unattached. Strong introvert. I didn't realize
| how much I missed going into the office until a few of us had
| half day in person meeting at office.
|
| I wanted to do more of it. Sadly, the office was still mostly
| empty, so there was no point going in. I left the job. There
| were other reasons of course, but I want my next job to be at
| least in-person 3 days a week.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I'm a remote worker who likes a good (emphasis _good_ )
| office environment better than working at home. But I prefer
| WFH nonetheless--because I don't like the office enough to
| pay five stressful hours of my waking time for it per week
| (for the commute).
|
| That's nearly five percent of my waking hours per week (does
| hit 5%, if traffic's unusually bad one or two of those days),
| including weekends. It's more than 6% of my waking hours on a
| weekday. That's a pretty steep cost, especially since the
| activity's in no way pleasant and I'm not compensated for it.
| Then factor in how many hours I'd spend working just to pay
| for the means to commute....
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I'm a bit in the same boat. I recently switched to full
| remote work. In retrospect, I think it was a bad decision. I
| don't feel I'm a part of the company anymore, and staying
| home feels lonely.
|
| Ironically, I liked to go to the office when my team actually
| wasn't there! I like to socialise with people from different
| teams but seeing my teammates is sometimes stressful. Also,
| I'm a slow thinker and I often prefer to work on problems
| asynchronously.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| > Ironically, I liked to go to the office when my team
| actually wasn't there! I like to socialise with people from
| different teams but seeing my teammates is sometimes
| stressful.
|
| Have you considered a coworking space? Some of the
| criticisms I see of remote work basically boil down to
| being completely isolated at home, or a home not being a
| conducive working environment (as opposed to feeling like
| they are more productive in office, enjoy being around
| their coworkers, etc.) I think in these cases the solution
| isn't necessarily to go into the office, but to simply get
| out of the house to work. For many this might be a happy
| medium, allowing you to get out of your home for a good
| chunk of the day, into an environment with amenities for
| working, and possibilities for socializing with others,
| while allowing flexibility to live far away from the
| office, shortening commutes or housing costs, and not
| having your daily social life tied to coworkers, which has
| downsides.
| pcurve wrote:
| You know, pre-covid when everyone worked at office Mon-
| Thursday, I also liked going into the office on Friday when
| no one was around. Something calming about working in a
| deserted 1500 person office building.
|
| I'm also slow thinker as well. I do terrible during those
| post-it note brainstorming sessions where you have to come
| up with ideas in response to something. Sometimes I wonder
| how I managed to work my way up to management.:)
| amalgamated_inc wrote:
| Try just going to a coffee shop every day as a routine, just
| to see some actual faces. Works for me.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Remote work is definitely not going to be universal. My company
| (in Seattle) shifted away from remote work starting in July
| 2021, and formally went back to 5 days in the office per week
| as the norm July 2022. My friends on the east coast report that
| their companies are also moving back to in-person work at least
| 3 days a week.
|
| I do like that COVID has normalized WFH when I have an
| appointment or something else I need to get done during the
| day. But I do think that working in person is better and I'm
| glad it's returning.
| MH15 wrote:
| I'm finding myself in a similar situation. Moved across the
| country to an LA tech job for a mostly in-person team less than
| a year ago. We had a reorg and now most of the new team is
| remote, manager in eastern time, office empty most days etc.
| Unsure what to do now to balance career goals.
| Operyl wrote:
| I frequently do day trips, or at one point monthly rentals, to
| various cowork offices to get that interaction with "more
| senior people." While I couldn't ask overly specific questions
| of those around me, we all tend to help each other the best we
| could. I don't live in SV (Florida here), but it was kind of
| interesting. It's not a complete solution to the problem you're
| describing, of course, but it built network and I have some
| friendships that grew from it. Also YMMV on how social people
| are around you, we kind of had an unofficial card system, red
| meant don't interrupt and green meant I was open for chatting.
| marricks wrote:
| Why do we talk about how it's good for people to have choices
| except when it comes to choosing to work remotely? It seems
| like big tech companies are forcing people back into the office
| so if you need mentorship it's available from established
| channels.
|
| On the other side of the coin, if you're junior, what's it like
| uprooting your life and social network for a job at a location
| with probably much higher rent and no existing social network?
|
| "Lamenting the junior dev" is pretty much the only
| compassionate argument for in-person work so of course it's
| brought up a dozen times on any remote thread on HN. It gets
| unnerving.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Work inherently limits your choices. That's why they pay you
| money, it's an exchange. Likewise I might want to code on
| Python but my employee has a legacy Java codebase so I'm
| forced to work with that instead.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| As a senior engineer I completely agree with this. A few
| days/week remote is fine. But full time remote is a disaster
| for junior engineers.
|
| As you alluded to, it's not just easier access to senior
| engineers. It's also feeling like you're part of something that
| matters. I've been lucky to have those kinds of jobs in the
| past. Now I just have a _job_ , I'm fully remote, and I hate
| it. It would be even worse if I was just starting out.
|
| I suspect that some companies will eventually migrate back to a
| hybrid model because of this. I can't be the only senior
| engineer who feels this way.
| kace91 wrote:
| > But full time remote is a disaster for junior engineers.
|
| I think this is a cultural problem. There is no reason why
| you can't pair or engage with people just as effectively in a
| remote setup.
|
| But the change is not magical, it requires having a system
| for things that previously happened in an improvised manner.
| Shindi wrote:
| I think you're right, my comment isnt to disagree with you.
| You can make pairing and constant communication work
| remotely. However you have to make it work so to speak.
|
| Meaning, there is a little bit more friction. You have to
| harangue senior engs to pair, you have to be posting in
| slack more, you have to do all these little things. But
| when you're in person there is less friction and so it gets
| done more naturally.
|
| Like if a task is taking longer than expected, sometimes
| its because it takes longer than expected. In remote world,
| you have to know when to ask for help. In person, you might
| be casually complaining about a task and someone who knows
| a better way can chime in and get you unstuck without you
| realizing you're stuck.
| mempko wrote:
| It's true co-located teams do better. Remote is worse. But,
| for the sake of the climate and environment, we need to
| eliminate commutes and wasted resources on office buildings.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| > It's also feeling like you're a part of something that
| matters.
|
| I feel the same way w/r/t something that matters. The trade-
| off there is when you look at when you
|
| - Find parking at a commuter station
|
| - Wait for a 6:50AM commuter train (which especially on the
| return trip can be mysteriously cancelled)
|
| - Arrive at the city and then transfer to a subway, which
| some-times doesnt even run well
|
| - Realize you've paid ~$48 for the day's commute
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| This article is about Silicon Valley which doesn't have
| this experience.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Right, seniors who live in the suburbs like remote. Juniors
| who tend to live near the office have less to gain in a
| remote environment and a lot more to lose.
| tedmiston wrote:
| > But full time remote is a disaster for junior engineers.
|
| This is very handwavy.
|
| As a principal engineer, I've worked with junior engineers
| that have adapted just fine and thrived, even as their first
| or second job out of college.
|
| But for that to happen, the company's culture has to be
| willing and able to shift to remote-first and/or fully
| remote. The more senior people need to role model the way of
| how to do remote well in a way that counters its (few)
| disadvantages.
|
| There is definitely a personal component too though. I've
| also worked with junior engineers that do not work well
| remotely. But I think that is more personality-based or
| perhaps maturity-based than seniority-based.
| irrational wrote:
| In my opinion, none of it matters. And all of us are
| expendable. I've seen so many projects closed up - and nobody
| missed them. I've seen so many people retire or move on, and
| they are never missed. Companies are just machines and
| neither their output nor the cogs of the machine really
| matter or are missed once they are gone. That is my
| experience, anyway.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| My personal observation is that all companies that succeed,
| succeed despite themselves. This is basically why you need
| Product Market Fit. It forgives all sins.
|
| It is all that matters. You can even completely fuck up a
| la Southwest and be totally fine.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| > It's also feeling like you're part of something that
| matters.
|
| This is where I realise I'm dealing with a completely
| different mindset.
|
| Work is something I reluctantly do to fund the things I
| actually care about. It sure as hell isn't my entire life or
| cause for existence.
|
| This probably explains why I love being remote.
| novok wrote:
| IMO I don't think it's mentally healthy to not at least
| 'enjoy' your work and have decent professional
| relationships with your coworkers. Work is a significant
| part of your life and to be socially disconnected and
| emotionally discordant about what your doing is not good.
| donmaq wrote:
| >IMO I don't think it's mentally healthy to not at least
| 'enjoy' your work and have decent professional
| relationships with your coworkers.
|
| You can have "decent professional relationships" with
| coworkers while remote. Virtual beer (I prefer scotch)
| drinking sessions work great, for example. And also opens
| your circle to ppl continents away.
|
| >Work is a significant part of your life and to be
| socially disconnected and emotionally discordant about
| what your doing is not good.
|
| Physical proximity is not necessary for social
| connection. Especially when it seems every app has
| webconference (slack too).
|
| Also, frequency of needed connection differs if you're an
| introvert vs extrovert. Larger society typically views
| the latter as 'normal' & the former as 'ill-adjusted',
| but I wouldn't expect that tendency on HN(?)
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| Equally, someone who moves straight to SV (or equivalent
| tech hub) is probably significantly more career-focused
| than someone who stays put, or moves to a city, so it's
| unsurprisingly SV is seeing more office work than other
| regions.
| janosett wrote:
| > Work is something I reluctantly do to fund the things I
| actually care about. It sure as hell isn't my entire life
| or cause for existence.
|
| Some of us prefer to care about our work. 40 hours per week
| is a lot of time to spend on something you don't care
| about. Caring about your work isn't the same as it being
| your "entire life or cause for existence". Our lives can
| consist of many different interests.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| There's a lot of work that needs to get done that no one
| really cares about. It tends to, ultimately, be very
| important work too.
|
| Not that it's done by people who aren't proud of the job
| they do, but most people don't really care about their
| work just the lifestyle it supports.
| [deleted]
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| >Caring about your work isn't the same as it being your
| "entire life or cause for existence".
|
| Nor is all work "things you care about" even if you love
| your job, unless you own the entity. Even if you had a
| passion for picking up garbage, you'd rather be doing it
| your way than the way your boss is doing it.
|
| There's nothing wrong with wanting to spend non-working
| hours on something that isn't exploiting you...
| raverbashing wrote:
| Sure, I care about my work and its mission.
|
| But shouldn't mean I have to be in an office all the time
| for me to care about it
| nugget wrote:
| The trend I'm seeing companies settle into is one where
| Monday and Friday are work from home days, with Friday being
| more like a half day or optional day. Tuesday, Wednesday, and
| Thursday are default in-office days. I'm curious how this
| will impact commercial real estate prices, because while
| there's less overall utilization, the peak load remains more
| or less the same.
| ericmay wrote:
| > It's also feeling like you're a part of something that
| matters.
|
| Maybe this assumption needs to change?
|
| I do think you and the OP you replied to are correct about it
| being more difficult for junior engineers, but at the same
| time it selects for people who don't need someone to tell
| them what to do, which would be a good thing for a company
| depending on the role and such.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| If a junior engineer isn't pestering me with questions, I
| know they aren't learning much. Also they overhear stuff
| and get drawn into conversations. Or more senior engineers
| join in conversations between them and another senior.
|
| All of this is a challenge over zoom.
|
| As far as being a part of something that matters, if I'm
| going to do a job for 8 hours a day, I'd like for it be as
| fulfilling as possible. For me that means pressure,
| teamwork, and at least some in-person interaction. I
| realize not everyone is the same.
| ericmay wrote:
| It depends and it's a balance. Too many questions is a
| bad sign because it means they aren't investing time into
| solving problems on their own (like math, try for 3
| minutes give up and look at the back of the book).
|
| The nice thing about Slack/Zoom combo is that if you have
| a highly self-directed engineer and a self-starter then
| they can spend time working until they truly feel stuck
| and then connect and share code snippets and do screen
| shares and calls. Instead of everything having to be a
| "stop the world" Q/A session you get a nice async
| communication channel that allows for various levels of
| triage.
|
| That being said I certainly find in-person collaboration
| to be very valuable, but not so valuable as to drive a
| car and sit in an office where I can't wear sweatpants or
| get up whenever I want to make an espresso or run an
| errand if I'm stuck on a problem for a bit.
| akavi wrote:
| In my experience, there's no such thing as too many
| questions, so long as they're of good quality.
|
| The best intern I've ever had was would hit me every
| single morning with a laundry list of questions, but,
| crucially they were almost 100% things she didn't yet
| have the tools or context to find out on her own.
|
| By the end she was asking me questions I hadn't even
| thought to ask
| ericmay wrote:
| I think there is. Asking for things you can look up how
| to do on the Internet just isn't a good question, for
| example. (Like something generic like how to install a
| package with NPM or something).
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > Asking for things you can look up how to do on the
| Internet just isn't a good question
|
| That is becoming less true by the day, as forums, blogs,
| etc., are filled with AI-generated pablum or with simply
| incorrect content. You still need an expert to tell you
| right from wrong, and the best option is to have a senior
| person in your team be that expert.
| ericmay wrote:
| > That is becoming less true by the day, as forums,
| blogs, etc., are filled with AI-generated pablum or with
| simply incorrect content.
|
| I'd contend if you can't tell as a junior engineer that's
| a problem.
| novok wrote:
| Either way, you need to bother to try to look up stuff
| for 5 minutes and figure it out yourself, and for
| technical content that isn't really the case much.
| Otherwise you make your mentor annoyed because you didn't
| even bother to put in the minimum effort and your
| essentially disrespecting them which creates emotional
| fallout. Even the bad content gives you some context and
| will make your question asking work better.
|
| This is a great guide to give to everyone: https://quick-
| answers.kronis.dev/
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Often the barrage of questions is a symptom of an
| inability to debug and investigate.
|
| Sadly, it's common with folks who learned programming
| with rote (they expect every answer to be somewhere they
| can just memorize).
| donmaq wrote:
| > [junior engineers] overhear stuff and get drawn into
| conversations. Or more senior engineers join in
| conversations between them and another senior
|
| Even on-prem before 2020, this happened most often in
| slack at least in the tech startups I was in(?)
| turdprincess wrote:
| I think this attitude of making sure each junior engineer
| has someone senior answer every question as soon as it
| comes up is doing a disservice to our junior engineers.
| One of the most important qualities of a senior engineer
| is that they can independently solve an open ended
| problem, especially one they haven't solved before.
|
| Being senior means you have learned how to learn. You
| don't get this skill by asking a bunch of questions, you
| get it by answering your own questions without having
| someone else to rely on. This is a skill we should foster
| in our junior engineers as early as possible, and being
| available as a shoulder to tap on every 15 minutes
| actively prevents that skill from developing.
|
| I think it is perfectly resonable to mentor a junior
| developer using a single, daily video meeting of 30
| minutes or 1 hour. This is a time they can use to ask
| questions about their previous day, bounce ideas, etc. If
| a question comes up later, they can spend the day trying
| to solve it and report on it in the next daily meeting.
|
| The best thing you can do for your junior engineer is to
| find a stream of work which challenges them at the right
| level (not too much, but just enough), and let them go
| independently while keeping some guard rails. This should
| not require many hours of 1:1 face time.
|
| I understand this approach might not work for some
| juniors who can only learn in a highly social context
| with a mentor in the room. But I think it can work for
| many juniors, and actually be beneficial in the long run.
| mym1990 wrote:
| This is like a high school or college classroom where no
| one asks any question...you know no one understands what is
| going on. What I would look for is juniors who can ask
| questions, take a morsel of feedback, run with it for a
| bit, and then ask another question. (But avoiding giving
| away solutions right away, since you want it to be a
| learning experience).
| lumost wrote:
| The challenge is finding enough people to go into the office.
| Companies got used to hiring anyone in their region, commute
| stopped being a consideration.
|
| How many people are willing to pay an extra 1-2k per month to
| live closer to their job? How many of those people are the
| people you want to hire?
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> How many people are willing to pay an extra 1-2k per
| month to live closer to their job?
|
| I dont think it is as simple as "willing to pay an extra
| 1-2k per month". It is with junior engineers w/o families.
| Once you have families, living closer to the job is way,
| way harder, esp for tech jobs concentrated in expensive
| cities. You cant just share a room with a friend when you
| have children. Also, things like schooling become
| considerations -- in NYC for example, you arent even
| guaranteed a seat in your _local_ school (you 're
| guaranteed a seat at "a" school.) It isnt surprising that
| SWE salaries ballooned in expensive metro areas and there
| are constantly "shortages" -- the huge premiums either go
| into super-expensive family housing near the city, private
| schools, a pied-e-tierre in the city, or some other
| acrobatics
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > But full time remote is a disaster for junior engineers.
|
| I used to think the same but realized it's more nuanced than
| that.
|
| There are basically two markets for junior hires: those who
| can prosper in a remote-first environment (capable of
| debugging on their own, read doc and ask relevant questions)
| and those who can't. The contrast is striking. A lot of
| businesses tried to cut programmer salaried with junior hires
| from "diverse" pipelines (codeword for bootcamps and
| certificates) and are now struggling onboarding them in a
| remote-first environment because of the required handholding.
|
| Of course, what the market hasn't figured out yet, is that
| there's a premium for the later.
| tnel77 wrote:
| I think employers should strive for flexibility. My employer
| allows full remote, but flies us in twice a year for what
| mostly boils down to "team building." More local employees
| have the option to go into the office as much/little as they
| would like. It seems to be a good balance and I feel like I
| have decent relationship with the entire team even though I
| live across the country.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| > _But full time remote is a disaster for junior engineers._
|
| Nonsense. If you have a good boss, you'll be mentored to
| success in person or remotely. Source: I'm the boss who's
| done that!
|
| Before you say "but but but", all the buts will point back to
| a bad boss, who isn't fixed by in-person presence.
| vidarh wrote:
| There is a severe problem of promoting engineers into
| management positions and providing no or insufficient
| training in line management or mentoring, though. A lot of
| companies with poor training and mentoring culture will get
| caught out by remote work and struggle to adapt fast
| enough.
| _vertigo wrote:
| > all the buts will point back to a bad boss, who isn't
| fixed by in-person presence.
|
| This reasoning is faulty and nearly circular. "Remote work
| can't be bad, because if it were, it'd be the fault of the
| boss, and a bad boss is going to be bad regardless of
| whether or not you're remote."
|
| That's a neat rhetorical trick for making almost any
| argument. You're sidestepping the fact that remote work
| makes mentorship harder and less likely to work. A good
| boss can make up for that, but not all bosses are good.
| Most are just average, and it's certainly not the case that
| managing a fully remote team is easier than managing a
| fully in-person one. Mentorship, knowledge transfer, and
| values transfer happen automatically more often than not in
| person, but they have to be intentionally fostered in a
| remote setting. That's harder for a manager to pull off.
| Remote work just makes this kind of stuff harder.
|
| When I worked in person, I could seek out mentorship myself
| in a natural way by making connections on my own, at lunch
| for example. Now, I guess what you're saying is that it's
| my boss's responsibility to schedule those opportunities
| for me, and if he doesn't, he's a bad boss. Okay -- how
| does that help me? Should I leave my job if I can't find a
| way to improve it? What if the next job has the same
| problem?
|
| Working remotely as a junior or intermediate engineer is
| basically stacking the deck against yourself. Sure, there
| are ways to make it work, but on average it works less
| well, and it's also more likely to just not work at all.
| Sweeping it under the rug by saying it's the boss's job to
| make it work does not absolve it of its problems.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Caveat being that not many people get to pick who their
| boss is, and quite frankly I don't know that I've met too
| many good bosses that toot their own horn.
|
| At the end of the day, people should have full
| accountability for their career and actions, but at a
| junior level there is a poor baseline for what a good
| trajectory and a bad trajectory looks like, so room for
| mistakes is bigger...which should allow people to learn
| faster.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| > _Caveat being that not many people get to pick who
| their boss is..._
|
| Orthogonal to my premise. Being in person doesn't entitle
| you to pick your boss, either.
| _vertigo wrote:
| No, but at least in person it's easier and much more
| natural to facilitate mentorship opportunities for
| yourself if your boss isn't so good.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| New companies will be formed that are remote-only from Day 1
| and stay that way forever. Employees who like remote work
| should go to these companies. I believe remote-only is
| superior, as I observe mentorship and frequent communication
| within my company, as everyone is dedicated to the remote-only
| mode.
|
| I believe that in-person office work is not about communication
| or mentorship but mostly about providing socialization benefits
| (chatting, going out to lunch) that are not needed for a
| company to succeed. "Less authentic relationships" has nothing
| to do with company success and everything to do with your own
| personal well-being.
|
| The correct move is to build a social life outside of your work
| - family, friends, community. As a remote only worker my social
| life is excellent because I did not tie my social well being to
| any company.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| One thing to recognize is that people who moved to SV for
| work, pretty much by definition, put career ahead of friends,
| community, and likely family. So it shouldn't be surprising
| that many of them will not like remote work if the whole
| reason they moved is nullified.
|
| I feel lucky to have been born and raised in SV. I can have
| my cake and eat it too - remote work, in person work,
| whatever - and I can still go out and have lunch with friends
| I've had for 30+ years.
| kace91 wrote:
| > One thing to recognize is that people who moved to SV for
| work, pretty much by definition, put career ahead of
| friends, community, and likely family. So it shouldn't be
| surprising that many of them will not like remote work if
| the whole reason they moved is nullified.
|
| Shouldn't they be happy that they can have their cake and
| eat it now?
|
| Move back closer to those friends and family and keep
| working your dream job!
| benatkin wrote:
| Except there is the RTO crowd and the WFH crowd might
| have to defend WFH. Hence all these comments.
|
| I personally prefer WFH but think WFH is secure and don't
| want to unnecessarily hurt RTO but I'm not sure I'm
| right.
| almost_usual wrote:
| I think a lot of younger people want the tech boom at the
| beginning of the 2010s they missed out on. Tech was still
| 'cool' and the energy in SV/SF was high. That era is
| over, honestly it started ebbing in 2017.
| gumby wrote:
| > One thing to recognize is that people who moved ... for
| work, pretty much by definition, put career ahead of
| friends, community, and likely family.
|
| That's a broad and unfair generalization and implication.
| People _decide_ to move for all sorts of reasons, and
| _then_ perhaps a job determines a destination. People who
| move to a cheaper location (which can be young people
| starting a family or retirees or any life stage in between)
| are also putting cost or quality of life "ahead of
| friends, community, and likely family."
|
| If you are a person who makes friends you will make friends
| in your new community. Ubiquitous networking lets you keep
| in touch to the level you wish with friends and family.
| When I go back to my home country I see friends with whom
| we just pick up mid-conversation as if I'd just been over
| their home the day before.
|
| Life has been so for thousands of years. Not necessarily a
| sacrifice as you frame it.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's a generalization but I'm not sure it's really
| unfair.
|
| I'm pretty sure that most people moving to SV/SF or most
| high cost areas really do so because they (or their
| partner) got a good job offer there, and especially in
| the case of tech and northern California, because there's
| a high density of other job possibilities as well.
|
| People do just decide they want to move _someplace_ but I
| doubt a lot choose the Bay area unless there 's a job
| offer attached.
| almost_usual wrote:
| The Bay Area offers great weather and nature. More people
| would live here if it weren't so expensive.
| ghaff wrote:
| And more people (probably different people) would live in
| Manhattan if it weren't so expensive. But they _are_
| expensive so people tend not to move to them absent a
| well-paying job.
| marricks wrote:
| It takes time to learn, but I found it much healthier to have
| a social life primarily outside of work.
|
| What happens if you change jobs? Get laid off? What happens
| if you make a big mistake and the social network you relied
| on is now angry at you? It can be way more of an emotional
| roller coaster.
|
| Of course that's not everyone! There's still plenty of in-
| person jobs for people who want or need it but at least
| there's more of a fair split now for folks who do not want
| that.
| [deleted]
| pts_ wrote:
| The problem is workplaces wanting all day presence like a
| prison and letting families including elder parents go to the
| dogs. Workplaces should be flexible.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > People who love remote work seem to be senior, well
| established employees who were already fully ramped up and had
| a social foundation in SV before the pandemic. I left my entire
| life behind after college to relocate to SV
|
| The other ones who love it are the vast sea of workers who
| chose to stay near family and friends rather than leaving to
| chase money in expensive coastal cities. Not being constrained
| to 3rd-tier-landlocked-city rates is great.
|
| [EDIT] Ah, you mean specifically the ones already in (or
| recently-late-of) SV who love it. I'll leave the comment but
| it's less-on-topic than I thought on my first reading.
| fhd2 wrote:
| It seems a bit cynical to imply that people who care about
| mentoring juniors prefer to work in an office and selfish
| people prefer to work remote. Having mentored dozens of
| engineers, remotely and onsite, my evidence suggests neither
| approach is entirely superior for everyone, it depends on
| mentor and mentee.
|
| It's just that, your preference - it doesn't have to be
| sinister or heroic, more or less effective. Some people prefer
| an office and some don't. That's valid enough on its own, isn't
| it?
| granshaw wrote:
| I think the picture is pretty clear at this point and further
| discussion is pretty pointless as it just results in the same
| points keep being brought up:
|
| Junior/single/ADHD/work-is-social-circle: REMOTE BAD
|
| Senior/married (esp with kids)/prefers-non-work-social-circle:
| REMOTE GOOD
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Yeah that's basically it. I'm single/senior/ADHD/work-was-
| social-circle (at previous job). Hate remote full time.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I'm senior/married/kids and I hate full time remote. I don't
| want to go in every day but 2-3 days a week is great. I just
| find it very hard to connect with people over screens.
| fsociety wrote:
| I have ADHD and greatly prefer remote as I can tailor my
| office how I like, and can break up my day as I like.
| repeekad wrote:
| But then how do companies capture both? Offices with only
| junior, single, social seekers kind of defeats all the
| benefits that those people are searching for. Do we just
| leave the first group behind to better benefit the second
| group?
| treis wrote:
| I don't think you do. This falls under "irreconcilable
| differences" and the solution is for people to work at
| companies that match their preferences.
| philippejara wrote:
| I'd be willing to bet a lot more would prefer to have only
| remote than only in person work, on both demographics. And
| even if not, seniors are just more important to retain
| anyway.
| granshaw wrote:
| Companies will just have to accept more of one of the other
| depending on their policies.
|
| Alternatively they could become such an attractive place to
| work via other factors that they can attract employees
| whether remote or not
| ffggffggj wrote:
| If companies want people to come into the office, they
| could pay them more and make it a condition of employment.
| In some sense they were getting a free ride for a long time
| by forcing senior employees to waste hours commuting for
| the benefits of in person mentorship. After all, upskilling
| junior engineers benefits the company much more than the
| senior engineer who is taking time away from doing stuff
| relevant to their own technical skills. Now the market has
| shifted: you want that, you pay more for it.
| TylerE wrote:
| And make the conditions not suck! At the very very least
| this means an office with a door that closes? And ideally
| blinds on interior windows.
|
| I've been remote for 8 years now and doubt I could ever
| go back, but above would be like a bare minimum to even
| consider - that and a minimum of a 25% comp bump over a
| remote option.
| gedy wrote:
| I'd gladly live near office if I could afford a decent
| house and schools for a family. Companies won't pay that to
| make it happen, so yes, I guess it's sorry/not sorry junior
| devs?
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Senior/married/ADHD/work-was-social-circle: I fucking love
| remote work, I'm straight up never going back to an office.
| jitix wrote:
| I think the main determinant is the last part.
|
| For me, Senior/Single/ADHD/prefers-non-work-social-circle:
| REMOTE GOOD
|
| But the issue raised in this thread is very real, with full
| remote I've see both junior training as well as new employee
| ramp up considerably slowed down, and there's no clear
| alternative to knowledge gained from random hallway
| conversations.
| seneca wrote:
| I think this is pretty accurate other than the ADHD part.
|
| Work from home is vastly superior to the distractions of an
| office (especially open offices) for me. At home, I have much
| more control over interruptions and noise, and completely
| eliminate the constant activity around me.
|
| I actually never realized how badly ADHD hurt my productivity
| until I started working remotely and the constant
| distractions severely decreased.
| synu wrote:
| I realise we are both sharing anecdotes, but I was at GitLab
| from about 250 employees to 1500 or so. It was all remote from
| the beginning, and it definitely wasn't all senior, fully
| ramped employees with pre-established work social networks in
| Silicon Valley (or any other single place for that matter).
| There was mentorship, as well as social events and travel.
|
| I'm sure your experience is factual, but maybe it's not a
| universal truth or something generally applicable about remote
| work.
|
| One thing for sure I would feel down about is if I moved
| somewhere I didn't like to advance my career, and then everyone
| there started working remotely making the whole move pointless.
| repeekad wrote:
| SF is disgusting, and SV in general is so expensive to live
| in and enjoy. It feels unsustainable for a region to profit
| so much from remote work that itself is so bad to live in if
| you aren't already successful. People can just ignore the
| homeless WFH and uber to their bars and restaurants, with
| staff who can't even afford to live there, I had to leave.
| deeptote wrote:
| [flagged]
| repeekad wrote:
| It's not about a social life outside my job, it's about also
| loving my work and enjoying what I do. Anyone can trade time
| for money and use that money outside work. But true success
| to me is loving both, and to me that's not possible without
| authentic relationships at work.
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for repeatedly posting
| unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments, and this time
| breaking the site guidelines extremely badly. Seriously not
| cool.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| As a long time software developer, I completely agree on this.
|
| I don't necessarily believe that "the office" and long commutes
| are the right way to employee workers, but I strongly believe
| that in person relationships tend to work a lot better for
| knowledge transfer and leveling up skills of junior employees.
| A solution, the feasibility of which I'm still actively
| researching, is a network of decentralized much smaller offices
| managed by a senior employee to meet other people in the area
| in person, at least once a week or more if deemed necessary by
| the group.
|
| The other thing I completely agree on is that it's not employee
| vs boss.
|
| Many of my colleagues have agreed to a cut of their paycheck to
| work remotely, which is a net win for every boss out there,
| they love to pay less for the same output, while also
| transferring all the expenses and the disadvantages of building
| a place suited to work at home to the employer. Kinda like a
| gig economy worker that has to buy a car, pay for the insurance
| and the maintenance to become a "self employed" Uber driver.
| goldenchrome wrote:
| Truly challenging work approached with a deep passion is best
| done in direct collaboration with others. There's no replacement
| for the energy that you find from a desperately hard working team
| that's working together in person. I'd estimate that 90% of
| people aren't interested in working that hard so remote works
| just fine.
|
| SV has been pumping out money for the last decade so they've had
| to offer cushier environments to attract talent, but now that the
| free money is drying up I hope that more companies will return to
| what made SV great in the first place: obsessive work.
|
| We're already seeing the more committed business owners enforcing
| in-person work, but there's been strong push back from employees.
| Only the companies that are truly creating value will be able to
| entice enough talent to work there, and many companies will
| falter in the process, but I think it's good for us all. It's
| like a forest fire that creates space for new growth.
| [deleted]
| amalgamated_inc wrote:
| > Truly challenging work approached with a deep passion is best
| done in direct collaboration with others.
|
| It is also best done in a quiet, comfortable place and not in a
| mosh pit with a dozen sales and HR people yelling on the phone
| all day.
|
| I've never worked in an office that was better for deep work
| than my home.
| horns4lyfe wrote:
| Agreed, but I'd add: 90% of people aren't interested in working
| that hard to make a founder life changing money while they're
| collecting a salary and adding a bullet point to their resume.
| And reasonably so.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-29 23:01 UTC)