[Raidion]

My take on remote work as a manager for a company with significant name recognition:

I think it's clear some people prefer working remotely (and the online hacker news crowd leans heavily that way). It's also clear that some people feel real benefits from being in the office.

I think it's inevitable that the culture of a company mirrors the values of it's leaders.

Companies with leaders that value in person communication, place a high premium on random collaboration will prefer their teams to be in office, and hire people based on this. This could involve companies with large amounts of more junior people that need training or experience (and whose leaders feel that training is easier done in person).

Companies with leaders that feel like collaboration is less important, are more willing to set metrics and not be as directly as involved, and hire experienced employees with less oversight, lean towards remote work.

This means you'll see a decline in hybrid teams. Teams want to be made up of people who share values, and this is something that will polarize teams. Companies that prioritize growing talent will prefer to be in person, companies that prefer to hire for specific roles with clear expectations will be OK being remote.

This polarization will be painful and shouldn't happen quickly. I see many companies putting their finger on the scale when hiring, preferring in office roles (and selecting people that want or can't get remote roles). Over time, natural attrition will mean less and less remote workers, and that eventual makes it easier to push others out.

I don't think this is a good or bad thing, but it does mean that if you want to be fully remote, you need to remain very competitive in terms of skills. You're competing against a wider talent pool. I do expect 3 days a week (Tues/Wed/Thurs) to become standard for many companies, and that broadens the "recruiting" radius for in office companies. 1 hour commute 5 days a week is the same time commitment as 1.5 hours commute 3 days a week.

[sam0x17]

> It's also clear that some people feel real benefits from being in the office.

I'm so tired of this equivocation. These aren't two neatly swapable things like some sort of cute little "preference" that each company can decide for itself without receiving any judgement.

The costs behind in-office work are GARGANTUAN, both in terms of the literal cost of renting + heating + cooling a huge office space that is vacant every weekend and every night, and the environmental impact of this flagrant waste, combined with the costs of requiring everyone to commute (and typically do so without compensation), the brain drain of only allowing "local" applicants, etc, etc...

This isn't some cute little preference where you can be like oh well Johnny prefers in-office. Johnny better come up with some really huge world-changing justifications or better yet we can stop renting such spaces and save money and the environment across the board.

[campl3r]

As an employee the cost of working from home is GARGANTUAN. I already life where I want to, don't force me to move to a more expensive place so that I have space for an office at home. I don't need to move for any office, as all offices in my local city (1+ mil) are easily reachable by bike or subway within 30 minutes.

[bluefirebrand]

> As an employee the cost of working from home is GARGANTUAN

You don't have a desk, chair, and wifi at home?

Or a kitchen table or anything?

I mean I guess it's unfair to assume everyone has any kind of office space set up at their homes but I'm kinda shocked you don't already just have a flat surface and a chair.

[sam0x17]

90% of the people I do video calls with are either calling from a literal closet or do an animated/replacement background anyway. Like you I spent a lot of time and effort preparing my (real life) background behind me, and most people are surprised when they find out it isn't fake.

Point being, no one cares, and you do not need a "home office" to WFH. You can WFH from a bus

[FirmwareBurner]

> It's also clear that some people feel real benefits from being in the office.

If I could instantly teleport in the office and if the office had quiet private spaces, yes sure, but the terrible housing market, long commutes and shit offices, are bigger downer that prevent me from prioritizing going to the office even though I like working and socializing with my coworkers.

[bluefishinit]

> Companies with leaders that feel like collaboration is less important, are more willing to set metrics and not be as directly as involved, and hire experienced employees with less oversight, lean towards remote work.

I feel like collaboration is very important which is why I only run teams WFH and never in the office. There's no collaboration happening when people are crammed together in a building, just posturing.

Collaboration for remote employees is amazing though. You can even look at large open source projects where people who have never even spoken to each other successfully develop software together.

[bluefirebrand]

I kinda agree here, especially with modern tools.

Screen sharing on a call is a 10000x better experience than "just come over to my desk and look over my shoulder"

Screen sharing is better for pair programming, mentoring, demoing, everything. It's awesome.

The only real downside to calls is that whiteboarding is a challenge, but tbh Whiteboards are anti-productive, they are where communication goes to die imo.