For people which companies made return to the office mandatory, how did it go?

2 years ago by Blaze (he/him) to c/cs_career_questions

Curious to see as it seems to be a trend lately

xmunk 40 points 2 years ago

It's an excellent opportunity to dust off the resume.

You can pry my work pajamas from my cold dead hands.

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flambonkscious 4 points 2 years ago

Love the work PJs!

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Blaze 24 points 2 years ago

Article on Dell from a month ago: https://arstechnica.com/...

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jubilationtcornpone 6 points 2 years ago

Interesting article. The author cited a study by Stanford claiming that 100% remote work resulted in a small drop in productivity. I'm curious as to how they would determine that. My [annecdotal] experience has been that orgs that are fully in person are completely inept at measuring productivity. Remote work just shines a giant spotlight on existing broken processes.

I would say the same about "culture". Good culture is highly intentional and dragging a bunch of people into the office for cheap pizza is not "good culture." In my experience, whether everyone is remote or in person does impact the culture, but that impact is dramatically outweighed by the effort -- or lack thereof -- by leadership to foster good culture.

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0x0 21 points 2 years ago

Hybrid. Not happy.

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slurpeesoforion 19 points 2 years ago

Mandatory hybrid 3 days a week.

The rule was unequally applied. Lots of people left. Some got laid off. Many more are looking. No one is happy.

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onlinepersona 18 points 2 years ago

A company I was at tried it and all developers said they'd quit if the policy were introduced. Management backed down really quickly after that.

Anti Commercial-AI license

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0x0 8 points 2 years ago

Hooray for unions, even if informal.

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MajorHavoc 12 points 2 years ago

Interesting related data point (since there aren't many answers here yet, and I hope to stir more) - my company embraced remote hiring aggressively and recruited a fantastic batch of talent.

I figured, remote work and all, it would be easy come, easy go. I figured we might lose remote folks as quick as we recruited them. I was wrong.

So far, annecdotaly, our staff attrition rate is significantly below what it was when we hired 100% in-person, all things considered.

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jubilationtcornpone 6 points 2 years ago

I saw this at my last job as well. My division was fully remote and had almost no turnover. We were also very productive, despite relatively poor leadership. Turns out when people like their jobs, they don't leave.

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SatouKazuma 2 points 2 years ago

You guys hiring?

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finestnothing 10 points 2 years ago

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tobogganablaze 2 points 2 years ago

We returned to office immediately after the mandate was lifted. I don't think anyone expected it to be permament, so there was no issue. It just went back to normal.

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Norodix 2 points 2 years ago

Not in this wave, but right after covid "ended" they wanted us to return to the office. There was some back and forth and since then the agreement is hybrid, at most 60% home office.

Im quite happy with that. I work in-person 2 days a week, but I do embedded so it is often needed to do more. When it makes sense I have 0 problem with doing more days.

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aredditimmigrant 1 point 2 years ago

It's not great but I honestly like it. For a few reasons

It forces me out of the house to get my full 10k steps in. Which I never get when I wfh due to my ADHD and putting it off.
I always feel if my coworkers are online I'm hesitant to ping them because they may be busy and I don't wanna bother them. If in the office, I can see if they're not that busy and have been able to say hi.
I have a toddler and when she's not in daycare she, or my partner, likes to come in and break my flow

We're 3 days a week in which is good and bad since I def am able to see most coworkers at least one day a week and also have two days I can wfh and either leave early or have an easy morning, but is weird due to when people come in.

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thesmokingman 5 points 2 years ago

For #2, how are you checking if they’re busy or not? I got frustrated a lot in office because someone would see me spinning in my chair, incorrectly assume I wasn’t busy instead of thinking deeply about a problem, and come up to break my concentration because “I wasn’t busy.”

If you don’t have a team working agreement or regular conversations about communication patterns both in-person and remote you’re possibly contributing to the problem. I prefer Slack messages because I can consume them when I need to and ignore them when I need to focus. If someone absolutely needs my attention they can Slack/Zoom call me to break my focus.

Of course you should also never just say hello.

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aredditimmigrant 3 points 2 years ago

1000% agreed on no hello. Got constant "hello"s from many team members. They'd even wait for me to reply before sending messages... Only figured that out after my boss brought it up in a 1:1 ... I just thought they realized the answer to the question.

I'm not talking about "sitting in your chair thinking" times. I'm talking about those micro BS conversations that people have around the office just to relieve from the monotony and try to bond. "Oh I spent last night playing this game/watching this show/ etc." or right after a meeting.

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