[llampx]

I'm of two minds. I don't think most office work can be done from home all the time, but I think a lot of it can be done efficiently from home. On the other hand I also value the social aspect as well as the easy onboarding in-person.

For GS, if their competitors are offering better working conditions, their top employees may switch over, leaving them with the ones who don't have a choice. Maybe he would better understand it as saying "Sales employees don't need a nice car or business class tickets or commissions to make sales." Technically true, but if your competitor is offering it you might want to do it as well.

[bottled_poe]

I doubt that WFH options are a significant factor for the best employees. There are so many other incentives/rewards/perks that imo should rank above this. Eg. Remuneration, opportunities, connection to colleagues (particularly those involved in promotional decisions).

> if your competitor is offering it you might want to do it as well.

That factor only seems relevant in isolation. Financial remuneration is surely the primary factor.

[Agingcoder]

Well, if I can 'pay' the employee a lot more just by letting live somewhere cheaper where he'll happy ( say, somewhere with a house, garden, and peace and quiet, an unaffordable luxury to most in large European cities such as London/Paris ), then wfh and compensation suddenly become linked.

Furthermore, by allowing full WFH, you also expand your recruitment pool to people outside your immediate geographical area.

That being said, I miss the office quite badly : real, physical interactions, can't be replaced with video conferences.

[bottled_poe]

Sure, it’s all linked. I think a big factor overlooked here is the interest in hiring locally... I suspect the people paying wages are somewhat invested in the local economy - especially the property market. I wouldn’t expect a major shift before those investors have adjusted their portfolio accordingly ... I.e. no time soon. Just a suspicion, what would I know.

[tankenmate]

Anyone wondering what GS is doing now with property ETFs? Obviously this is pure speculation, but... GS have form so...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3goSYkVPNE&t=338

[eertami]

>Financial remuneration is surely the primary factor

Personally, I wouldn't quit WFH even if someone offered to triple my salary to come work in an office.

[pdimitar]

Same. The conditions I cultivated at my home office are unbeatable in many ways, very expensive standing desks and chairs included. Not to mention a world-class quality display that makes most other displays seem like toys.

I invested in my home office and it's perfect for me. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

[anothernewdude]

WFH is remuneration - being able to move to a cheaper area can offer an effective 2x or 3x pay increase.

[bottled_poe]

Valid, but see my reply to the other comment about local hiring

[JumpCrisscross]

> if their competitors are offering better working conditions, their top employees may switch over

Speaking anecdotally as someone who's been away from high finance for a few years. The drift is towards firms who let their employees work together. I don't know of many high performers, or ambitious up and comers, who want to stay isolated at home.

[twelve40]

I think you are kind of conflating what's theoretically efficient, what you personally seem to value, and what you think top performing employees will be able to dictate to the company based on what the competition offers.

I think it will be more complicated and subtle than this. A few things to consider:

* What's theoretically efficient may never actually materialize. For example, India has ~70 million English-speaking college graduates - that's close to the US in absolute numbers. They can be paid (probably) an order of magnitude less per person. We've had the internet and teleconferencing for decades, yet outsourcing did hit quite a hard limit at some point, and counterintuitively companies before 2020 still hired in the most expensive areas in the world (e.g. SF & Menlo) for fairly routine web programming, and paid $500k comp for what in theory could have been done remotely with English speakers for 1/10th of that. (What happens now? We'll find out)

* Hype of the day - companies making waves extending remote arrangements or conversely bringing everyone back, we'll see how that plays out.

* Social aspects - but of a slightly different kind than some refreshing friendly banter - if you want to get promoted, you need to show your face and be on top of your boss's mind, which is best achieved with regular physical presence and that's an unfair advantage that the onsite people will have.

In pure meritocracy that wouldn't matter of course, but how many places are run as pure meritocracy? At Uber a few years back people bitterly fought for promotions (top 20% would get X times the stock and bonuses) and back then, the rare remote people had to either put up a major extra effort to remotely fight for themselves, or get left out (and eventually let go, I've seen remote people let go mostly because they did not have a major presence in the office). I think it's a bit different now obviously with everyone remote for the time being, but in fiercely competitive environments whoever is closer to the boss wins.

[shdhdmashmash]

Regarding your first point, U.S. companies still hire expensive domestic employees because the quality of education in India isn't comparable to the U.S. I think anyone on HN who has utilized Indian outsourcing understands they produce substandard work when compared to domestic standards. Those who are at the level of a U.S. developer are generally brought over to the U.S.

[r00fus]

It's probably more that communication between different cultures and across a 11.5 hour timezone delay pose a significant barrier that require efficient project leadership and company culture to manage.

Neither of these exist in a relatively local WFH setup. People still have the same weather, sports and other interests which allow for better cohesion. Hell, I'd often zoom into a meeting rather than walk to the conf room pre-covid anyway because I'd gain 5m to/from and I had back to back meetings.

[jboog]

I don't work in Investment Banking but I've heard a ton of anecdotal reports that in IB at places like GS the "Work from home" has made their already long hours even worse.

Even before Covid they worked 80-100+ hour weeks 7 days a week. Now that everyone is home all the time the expectations are that you're never "off" as before you'd at least get to go home for 4-6 hours and get some sleep.

I don't know how much of that is self driven vs top down but IB is one of the few jobs where it seems like a lot of people are looking forward to going back to the office from what I've seen.

[bennyp101]

My understanding is that a large part of the finance/banking culture is to be able to show off how much money you are making, and be able to flaunt that - so being in the office/socializing outside is a large part of the job as it were, and being at home wouldn't allow for that.

(I could be be way off the mark here)

[saiya-jin]

Most employees of the bank are far from being able to affect money inflows in the bank, so you are specifically talking about traders/private client bankers here, which are few % at most in any bank

[bennyp101]

That is true, I guess in my head I had assumed that somewhere like GS was just full of traders/ private banking, and not really a lot else - but thinking about it, that doesn't really make sense

[robjan]

You're not too far off it though. The people I know in back office roles at GS tend to have a better work-life balance than most other people I know.