[Kharvok]

Some of my teams were fully remote about eight weeks in 2020, while others have been remote the entire time. I don't believe in full RTO, just hybrid.

1. The last few years have demonstrated that projects with teams that are primarily remote require a higher degree of project overhead staffing. I think this is most evident with very small teams. For example, it's fairly easy for a small internal tool team to coordinate their work without a project manager, design, or business analyst if they are in close phyiscal proximity. The struggle is when you distance that team from larger products/project. Even in the minimal case creating visibility for that small team into larger workstreams requires overhead itself. With the macro environment and with leaders being forced to tighten the belt, this is less and less possible. All communication has to be structured fully remotely. That structure requires management.

2. I've found about 20% of people have the ability to maintain a professional work environment at home. I'm constantly seeing in meetings where highly compensated employees are providing childcare during working hours. I'm all for flexibility, but it becomes a distraction.

3.Junior employees have little to no ability to develop skills from seniors. I have hired entire classes of employees in software engineering roles that started in a fully remote environment, realized they weren't learning anything, and then came to work in a hybrid setting.

[phoronixrly]

> I'm constantly seeing in meetings where highly compensated employees are providing childcare during working hours

Do you really think it's good, and that people should be separated from their children for 8-10 hours (or more if commuting) each day? I don't.

Also, since you don't want your employees to get distracted by childcare, does your office offer daycare for their children?

Edit: And yes, they daycare question is also met with awkward silence from the management on each all-hands I've heard it asked before.

[chrismatheson]

Not that I’m particularly defending RTO. But specifically on the daycare thing. No. They offer you a large salary and let you choose and organise what works for you. Not deciding for you and staffing some daycare as an afterthought on the 3rd floor or whatever :)

IMHO most “perks” are just someone else spending your money for you.

[phoronixrly]

I am sorry, but maybe you didn't understand where I was coming from. I think that having someone else bring up your children because you're forced to be present at an office is absolutely insane. I don't understand how we got to a point where it's considered normal.

I also think that the least that your employer could do is facilitate a place for your child to stay close by and be taken care of, so you can be able to spend your breaks/commute with them, take immediate action if they get sick/hurt, etc.

Why the employer? Because good luck organizing with your co-workers to rent a place suitable for daycare in/close to your office building and hiring personnel to staff it. I wonder what salary should they offer me to make this more feasible than sending a CV to a remote-first company instead...

[antisthenes]

> 3.Junior employees have little to no ability to develop skills from seniors. I have hired entire classes of employees in software engineering roles that started in a fully remote environment, realized they weren't learning anything, and then came to work in a hybrid setting.

How often were they mentored by senior engineers? Daily meetings? Weekly? Who developed the training program? Who wrote the documentation?

[deely3]

1. > All communication has to be structured fully remotely. That structure requires management.

As opposed to work from office where management does not required because... Managers already present in the office?

2. Erm. From my exp 20% of people have to learn to how to maintain a professional work environment at home. Thats just a skill, nothing more.

3. Agree.

[trynewideas]

> I'm constantly seeing in meetings where highly compensated employees are providing childcare during working hours.

If you think that's bad, you should've seen what they did at the office during work hours for their kids when they were required to leave the house.