[Raed667]

I'm struggling with the idea of hybrid WFH.

It still means that I need to live near the office. Instead of a cheaper, quieter place far away from cities.

Besides making middle-management happy, I'm not sure what is the benefit of having one required day per week at the office.

[shagie]

With the "everyone remote" of 2020, one of the things that spooked a lot of companies is the employees adding to additional complications by living in states (or sometimes countries) that have different labor laws, taxes, and such without telling the company.

This resulted in things where they suddenly found out that they need to pay taxes in four states (and Canada - unless they get that employee to leave within 3 weeks... and firing them is an option).

The three day hybrid may also be something to discourage one employee trying to hold down two remote jobs (on Reddit, this is a not uncommon question and sometimes a really suspicious coworker who suddenly can't VPN or connect to slack for a day or two each week).

The hybrid model keeps a number of problems that the company would otherwise have to think about and enforce non-issues.

[LAC-Tech]

> With the "everyone remote" of 2020, one of the things that spooked a lot of companies is the employees adding to additional complications by living in states (or sometimes countries) that have different labor laws, taxes, and such without telling the company.

I've side-stepped this issue by being self-employed.

Then it becomes as simple as - you keep paying me and I keep working.

[hutzlibu]

Well, I don't know how this works in the US, but in germany when you are self-employed, but basically only work for one company - it would be declared a fake selfemployed situation, with lots of legal and tax complications, basically forcing the company to employ you regulary.

(to counter companies pushing their workers to be self employed, to avoid taxes, healthcare costs, etc. But I am not convinced if the result is beneficial to the workers)

[LAC-Tech]

Not sure how it works in the US either. I'm in NZ and it works similarly to how you described it working in DE.

Though my clients in another country, I don't want to push it, they don't want to push it - so I don't care. Eventually I will jack up my rates and they will either sign me again or I'll find somewhere else.

[jonpurdy]

From what I understand, it's an issue in Canada as well, but only if you leave money in the company and don't take it out as salary.

If you pay yourself 100% of the extra revenue (aside from expenses), then there's no avoidance of a lower corporate tax, thus no issue.

[Raed667]

In France as well. Also if you're a contractor you can't be working for the same company/role more than 3 years for the same reason.

[marcinzm]

I've found that it's much harder to form social bonds, especially cross-team, when working remotely and never seeing people in person. Socializing via Zoom is not the same. The lack of lunch and hallway conversation hurts a lot without even getting into the outside of work socializing. That in turn leads to minor issues exploding because no one has a sense of empathy built for anyone else.

[teucris]

Came to make a comment like this. Some jobs are great to do entirely remotely and forcing workers in those roles to come into an office is completely outdated bullshit.

But there are tons of jobs that require trust and collaboration. For those workers, in-person relationship building is a fundamental part of the job.

We need to be clearer in our job titles and descriptions about that, so that there is less conflict in expectations of remote work.

[hellbannedguy]

Yes it's harder for most people to form bonds online.

I have worked with people whom only have friends, and social time, through an office setting. I've worked with people who can't wait to get away from their family by going to work. My dad couldn't wait until monday.

I was that guy that socialized, and made friends through work. I'm still that guy kinda? The hour grooming, and the two hour commute is making me think I should reach out to people whom I come in contact locally.

That said, some people don't need the social experience going to an office provides.

They have full lives, and don't need to show up to the charade. If they are good employees, why force them back?

Smart employers will let them work from home.

[matsemann]

Agreed. I didn't mind for the first part of the pandemic, as I knew everyone on my team and we just kept shooting the shit on chat or video. But then I switched jobs, and last week was actually the first time I met most of them. I've found it much harder to build the same rapport.

[irrational]

I’ve worked at the same company for nearly 20 years. I’ve had precisely 0 lunch and hallway conversations in all of those years. Lunch time is when I go work out. If I’m not working out, I’m sitting at my my desk working. Socializing is for non-work hours. However, I’ve learned a lot more about coworkers (some of whom I’ve worked with for more than 10 years) during the pandemic from talking at the beginning of zoom calls waiting for everyone to show up.

[aetherson]

You are not the modal employee.

[jcims]

I’m not at zero but generally avoid socializing at work. It just stresses me out for some reason. I’m pretty affable and approachable and genuinely like people, just from a distance.

[hutzlibu]

So ... since you only worked or worked out ... when did you actually eat?

[refurb]

You sound like a fun person to work with!

[parafactual]

Does it bother you if someone doesn't socialize at work? I don't understand why it would.

[refurb]

If someone can make it 20 years with zero hallway conversations I assume they aren’t very pleasant to be around.

I mean, if I asked OP if they had a nice weekend, what would happen? Would I be ignored? Just a grunt in reply? Or a “fine” and that’s it?

[SauciestGNU]

I assumed they were referring to the spontaneous work-related hallway chats that middle managers and executives claim are so important. I'm not OP, but I relate, and while I'm not big on small talk I'll engage in it because I respect my colleagues and I don't want to snub them.

[parafactual]

If you ask someone if they had a nice weekend and they give a one-word response, why not just not ask them questions like that? It seems rude to expect someone to put a certain amount of effort into conversation with you that you initiated.

[gremlinsinc]

Why not just do like a 3-4 day retreat to "bond" every 3-4 months?

Or even monthly have maybe a 2-3 day mini-retreat work a day or two on-site and do some after-work bonding for those who are staying in hotels, etc... I mean if it's just about bonding. I had pretty good bonding with an agency I worked with and we'd do once a year retreats and it was really nice to hang out with the team, then go back home and hang out in slack.

[chillel]

because people have families, and parents can't just bounce on their children?

[kevinmchugh]

The parents I know have their lives greatly complicated by commutes and having to ensure childcare while they're in transit to or from the office.

[techsupporter]

As a parent, a five-day-per-week commute has many more opportunities for something to go wrong than an off-site I know about a month in advance that lasts for three nights.

Every single day, lots of things have to go right: dropping off has to be at a defined time (whether school or daycare, most activities have a predetermined start time unless the kid is very young, which mine isn't any more), then I have to get to work from the daycare, then I have to hope that nothing blows up during the day requiring me to stay longer, then I have to hope nothing blows up on the trip to daycare, and so on. I'm very fortunate that daycare is on a transit path for me because my family doesn't drive and transit around here is usually more reliable than driving.

Working from home for the last 15 months has been a godsend. I don't have to deal with any of those oddities. My spouse and I have traded off who takes a few days off every few weeks or so to be "on vacation" with the kid, or we sync up and take days off together to just veg at home as a family.

If you tell me I can skip the bullshit commute and only have to plan child care around a retreat that is booked a month, or even a couple of weeks!, in advance, I will gladly take that trade. Even if it's a "bring your spouse" kind of thing, I can get a set of grandparents to train or fly in for that time (or even go to them).

[ghaff]

Yes. And I's argue that some semi-structured time to exchange ideas, come up with ideas, "bond," etc. with everyone on some scale of team and even guests from other teams is probably better than bump into you conversations that often aren't going to happen with people on other floors, in other offices, and even on different continents.

[xur17]

I'm guessing the company size (~15) has a lot to do with it, but the 100% remote startup I am at has had a lot of success with onsites 2-3x / year.

[notacoward]

I think that occasional in-person contact is important to avoid the "erosion of trust" that I've seen occur over and over again working full-time remote at multiple companies for most of a decade before COVID. Even famously all-remote teams have relied on periodic conferences and summits to maintain that contact. It works. It's why I never balked at travel requirements - as often as monthly - during those remote jobs.

The key is to recognize that the in-person contact is part of the mix to enhance empathy/connectedness and for those few situations where a multi-way high-bandwidth conversation is necessary. Planning sessions are an example IMO. Understanding how people really feel about priorities etc. is important, but often involves interpreting facial expressions and body language that aren't captured (or conveyed well) on video. Making it a part of your every day team work environment puts you into an entirely different and no longer remote-friendly milieu.

[2muchcoffeeman]

I find in person meetings more effective. I’d rather meet once a week or 2 and get all the big meetings done then go away to code, than have Zoom meetings every single day.

I predict that in all the full time WFH companies, some small group will start having in person meets once every X. Or some other startup will innovate past an incumbent by having a hybrid model.

Then hybrid will be the next “new” thing.

[rhacker]

Zoom is the new power point. Has anyone noticed we've replaced the concept of "the thing that is annoying about meetings is power point" to just blaming zoom.

I don't even think we have a point to make, it's just like a thing we say... like oh god another power point meeting, oh god another zoom call.

I think the real thing is "oh god another thing I have to do I don't want to" - but we're afraid to say it.

[BTCOG]

I guess I should be so fortunate that I've been working from home since the end of February 2020 and that all we use is Microsoft Teams for audio-only calls. We have never done video calls and I cannot imagine why anyone would stand for that shit.

[riffraff]

Well, for one you can just nod along while other people speak, or shake your head. Video just increases the communication bandwidth a bit.

You can also quickly switch to screen sharing some chart and discuss it. Or you can look at a backlog, or some bit of code, or a mockup.

I've been remote for 12 years, in my experience video calls are strictly better than audio only, but of course it's fine if someone can't join with video.

It's not video that makes meetings bad, it's people.

[2muchcoffeeman]

Oh, I’m not afraid to say I hate teleconferencing.

And I assure you I wasn’t imagining the average of 3-4 hours of online meetings every single day that was compressed to 1-2 days every 2 weeks once we started meeting in the office again.

[amerkhalid]

Zoom meetings have made me appreciate in-person meetings so much. It seems phrases like these, "Can you hear me?", "Sorry I was on mute", "You are breaking up", "Sorry can you repeat that", "Sorry my internet connection is bad today", take up way too much time. Then people speaking over each other and you cannot understand anyone at all.

I think once a week in-person meetings and rest of week heads down WFH would be a great idea. Or we can do everything in async communication like emails.

And no, not Slack. It is even more distracting and should ideally be used only during scheduled meeting in place of Zoom or for emergency situations.

[aix1]

I think that quality issues are part software and part internet connectivity. We use an internal version of Google Meet and it works fantastically well (and during the pandemic has acquired a ton of useful new features).

Internet quality and speed is a function of a few things, including where people live. I wouldn't want to extrapolate but I've not been finding connectivity to be an issue for internal meetings. Yes, occasionally there are hardware issues (e.g. I had a flaky WiFi chip in my laptop). These may be unfortunate for a particular meeting but tend to get fixed and so "can you hear me?" is definitely not a recurring pattern in my experience.

Sometimes people choose to join video calls from their phone while, for example, walking their dog (a completely acceptable thing culturally). In those instances video and audio quality can be variable; it's up to the individuals to make sensible choices around which meetings are suitable for this sort of thing.

Finally, there's a phone backup, where you can dial into a meeting (audio only) over a phone line. Some people use this if they need to take a meeting from somewhere with particularly bad connectivity. I personally have not needed to use it once in the 15+ months of WFH but I've seen others use it.

People unintentionally speaking over each other was definitely a thing in the beginning, especially in larger meetings. I've been founding it happen less and less over time, as people learned when to pause and we developed better ways to moderate large online meetings. Video makes this much easier compared to audio-only.

Overall, I think I've come to prefer video calls to in-person meetings, at least when _everyone_ joins over video. It'll be interesting to see how well the original, hybrid model (some participants joining in person and some over video) will work.

[Raed667]

I don't have that option. The number and length of meetings is the same if I'm WFH or in the office.

Since we're doing SCRUM, their spacing is also the same: sprint review, retrospective, splaning, refinement, ideation, etc..

[okaram]

But you don't need to live as close, right? A one hour commute sounds like hell, but once a week? Meh.

I work from home, and my team is distributed, so we work fine online, but there are a few times when we say 'we'll have that conversation over a beer when we meet in person'.

[xkqd]

I’ve always held a belief that a lot of America’s social and economic inequalities are fueled by the consolidation of good, high paying jobs around a few major cities. I’d get behind any party that tries to tackle this by incentivizing the distribution of these jobs across America. If cheaper, quieter lifestyles result from this, all the better.

[dcolkitt]

At the very least, crowding the most intelligent and ambitious people into the country’s lowest fertility metro (the Bay Area) certainly seems like not a good idea from an inter-generational perspective.

[lolinder]

It seems like you might be mixing up cause and effect. I'd assume that the Bay area is the country's lowest fertility Metro precisely because it's filled with ambitious people.

[mensetmanusman]

The entire west is not having children, it’s not just the Bay Area.

[aksss]

Nearly the entire developed world after their growth booms. China will get there too. It’s a common enough pattern for wealthy countries worldwide.

[muyuu]

China has been in (artificially) in demographic decline for a while most of the country remains dirt poor.

There is no such cultural determinism. Many countries won't stop having children as their economy grows, in fact the opposite is happening in many places around the world.

[aksss]

Nobody said anything about "stop having children" (good night!) - back to reality: I think the established pattern for countries joining the developed world is large economic growth/dev, followed by baby boom, followed by declining rates of reproduction until under the replacement value. This happens not only because of changing priorities of a wealthier population and changing behaviors, but also the availability of birth control and lower mortality rates (infant and elderly).

So it's not that birth rates decline "as their economy grows" - the birth rates go up during the growth phase - it's what comes after in an established prosperous society: fertility rates decrease.

It's consistent enough to predict with some certainty. As prosperity has grown worldwide, so global TFR has dropped. This happens one by one with the individual countries following a predictable pattern.

China does have regulatory limits that keep their TFR lower than it otherwise would be, they are still in their (modern) growth cycle. Absent that regulation, with the economic boom they've been seeing in last twenty years you'd expect to see the fertility rate boom accordingly, and while it appears to be growing despite the regulatory constraints, it's still below replacement value. This slow growth in the face of structural prosperity changes is the impact of regulation, not organic. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/fertility-ra...

[wernercd]

Social bonds, Office chat, meetings around a table, etc. There are so many things you can't get over a zoom call that not having a hybrid model is what I won't understand. You can have the best of both worlds and if that means that there are some limits on where you can live?

I saw someone say that a lot of what makes WFH successful currently are the bonds that we had built while working together... and that as time goes on, those bonds will loosen as new people come in that don't have those experiences and those hallway talk.

I think I agree with that... but it remains to be seen how things will work going forward. I see most companies going to a hybrid model. I see a large number of turnover at places that don't offer hybrid.

My current place of employement seems to be winding up towards hybrid and I have a long commute (had before covid). I'd be unhappy with 5 days meat in seat. I'll be very happy if I only have to be there 2 days a week. Still happy with only 3. Sad with 4. I'd probably hunt for a new job with 5. Maybe 4.

[makeitdouble]

On not wanting the hybrid model, while where you live is an aspect, how you organize is another.

For instance it’s a big difference if you can send and take your kids from school yourself 5 days a week or if for one or two days you need to find someone to contract just for that.

Same for having one or two cars, needing a laptop or not, etc. There are a lot of big and small effects on having to commute one/two days or 0.

[wernercd]

Absolutely - it's a complicated equation and all things determine. From personality (some love home, some love office) to child care to technology (laptop, internet cost at home, speed) to all what you mentioned and a hundred more points.

I think, personally, most will want hybrid - to get the best of both worlds - and it's simply a matter of finding the right personal and corporate balance (if possible).

We'll see how long term the effects of COVID are. We might see WFH become mainstream... we might see a massive pushback to go back to the Old Normal. I think successful companies will find the middle to keep their talent.

[pavel_lishin]

A lot of meetings are much easier to have in person.

Socializing, as other people pointed out, is also much easier in person.

[disrael]

Just how close are you trying to be with your co-workers? My parents don't live in the same state with me but we talk weekly on the phone and meet once in a while in person.

If you need hourly contact with your co-workers I hope it's more about doing the job then socializing. If it is about doing the job and your job is software development then are alternatives to endless meetings.

[closeparen]

On HN and Reddit people are engaged in the characteristic activity of friendship - discussing topics of mutual interest - yet it would be pretty sad if that’s all someone had for friends.

Similarly, just because you do work with some people, does not make them your team.

Now maybe programming can be organized in a way that doesn’t really require a team. People can get projects done by interacting in a more transactional, contractor/gig-worker way. But that is a very different experience from being part of a team.

[onion2k]

On HN and Reddit people are engaged in the characteristic activity of friendship - discussing topics of mutual interest - yet it would be pretty sad if that’s all someone had for friends.

On web forums like HN people post regardless of who might be reading. That's an important difference.

[lmm]

Humans were not made to spend 40+ hours/week not socializing.

[h4waii]

The nice thing about "remote work" is you can choose who you want to spend that 40+ hours a week with.

[dag11]

You had 18+ years spending 24/7 with your parents. Also, I'm sure the weekly calls aren't quite enough from their end, they never are for a parent--understandably!

[prirun]

A lot of meetings are also a complete waste of many people's time.

[magicalhippo]

Whenever I get a meeting I don't understand why I was invited to, I just ask whoever invited me, or my boss if customer did, what my purpose is in the meeting.

Almost always I can avoid the full meeting with the understanding that they can call me in if they need my expertise. When that happens it's typically just a couple of questions and I can go back.

Sure some weeks can get a bit busy with meetings if we have a lot of projects going on, but I'm almost never in a meeting where I feel I'm wasting time.

[sleepybrett]

This is something great about video conferencing. Forced to attend a meeting that has no bearing on your work. If you are there in person, banging away on your keyboard the whole time in the corner is considered rude. On video conferencing you can just mute yourself, turn down the volume and just keep your ears perked for your name and keep working.

[petre]

In Japan it's socially acceptable to fall asleep during meetings.

[aix1]

Probably stating the obvious, but isn't being forced to attend a meeting that has no bearing on one's work is a sign of a pretty significant organisational dysfunction?

[muyuu]

it might be but it's still commonplace, and not just in America

[contravariant]

Though if there's anything the past few months have demonstrated, online meetings have that same problem.

[brewdad]

The solution is fewer, more effective, meetings not forcing people back to face-to-face meetings that should have been an email.

[theshrike79]

Depends on the hybrid model.

If it's "3 days every week at the office", then you need to live close by.

If it's "two days every month", you can just stay at a hotel for that time with the money you saved from commuting - maybe even bring the whole family =)

[jjav]

> I'm struggling with the idea of hybrid WFH.

I'd be ok with up to a max of one day a week in the office.

That doesn't restrict location too much. Only one day a week, I'm willing to put up with a multi-hour commute. Anything more than one day, I don't think so.