That's very interesting. My experience has been the opposite, that people who are pro-remote are intense about it, that they often deny there being any benefits to working in an office and get angry and dismissive toward anyone who says they want to work in-person.
I would argue that the reason "remote wins" is that to get the full benefit of working in person you really need 100% of your team to work in the same building on the same hours. As soon as one person goes remote, the in-person experience is significantly degraded for everyone else.
Thus, as soon as company allows "hybrid", the people who prefer remote go remote and the in-person experience quickly degrades. This starts a spiral where people on the margin -- who still prefer 100% in person! -- decide it's no-longer worth coming in, which in turn degrades the experience further and pushes more people to give up on the office, until there are very few people left coming in.
It doesn't take very many people to set off this spiral: in my anecdotal experience, once a team goes 10-20% remote, the office is pretty useless.
So what I see is there's a "tyranny of the minority" effect. I think the long-term response is going to be more sorting of companies into all-remote or all in-person, with fewer companies in the "hybrid" space that's so common today.
> That's very interesting. My experience has been the opposite, that people who are pro-remote are intense about it, that they often deny there being any benefits to working in an office and get angry and dismissive toward anyone who says they want to work in-person.
There is a difference between arguing that remote work is better and insisting everyone work remotely. I've seen lots of people say remote work should be an option. I have yet to see a single person, on Hacker News or elsewhere, insist that everyone be required to work remotely. On the opposite side of the argument, I've seen plenty of people argue that in-person work should be required for everyone on the other hand.
At a minimum, it should be illegal for companies to say you can work from home! and then back track. Employees that already WFH full time should at least be able to do so without RTO considerations.
Honestly, I'm not one for laws about these sorts of things, but given the state of climate change, there should be legal requirements that if a job can be done in a WFH setting, it should be an option for employees to choose. By quantifying what roles don't require in person by defining eligibility, as opposed to allowing businesses to set the eligibility.
I think the details could be worked out reasonably.
> As soon as one person goes remote, the in-person experience is significantly degraded for everyone else.
Does the office fall apart when someone goes on vacation or is sick? If not, why then would one or two days away from the office have such a big impact?
If someone is sick or on PTO some things are assigned to another person and some things just wait for them to get back. And yes if the whole team has, for example, Mondays and Fridays remote, then some things just wait for Tuesday -> Thursday to happen.
The degradation I'm referencing is if you have one or more people permanently remote on your team. Then, just picking a few trivial examples, you can't take a notepad with you and make a team decision over lunch, or huddle around a whiteboard, etc., because those things don't work for the remote teammate. Even when you're in a conference room with a good video setup, it's still very common to have a lot of repeating things for the remote person, or having the remote person struggle to chime in etc., that make it a worse experience for both sides compared to the lowest common denominator of "everyone is on Zoom."
Would it be fair to say that you skew towards preferring in-person work? I think a possible takeaway here is that we notice people making arguments that we disagree with more than we notice people making arguments that we agree with.
All I can say is true for me, but as an introvert in a creative role (is it fair to call programming a creative role? I think so) being in an office around other people, especially open floorplan offices where we're all able to glare at each other from across our desks, stymies my ability to be creative. I just feel the pressure of being watched all day, and sometimes it clams me up. And then after work I go home feeling exhausted, mentally, and defeated for not getting what I wanted to get done. And when I need help on something in a remote role, I'm able to articulate the problem statement very easily over text, which my coworkers (one or two in particular) are very helpful at pointing me to a solution asynchronously while I hack away at it. So to your argument about the reason that "remote wins", I'd argue there are more reasons that it wins. But that's just for me, and I imagine many other people that also prefer remote.
I don't think in-person work is going anywhere though. I do agree with your perspective that hybrid work seems likely to not be ideal for people that prefer in-person. In fact, I'd argue that hybrid work is not ideal for people that prefer remote either. In my experience you usually have managers questioning your motives for going remote in those hybrid environments, making you feel like you're an inconvenience to the team, and pressuring you to come in some days on a commute that may not be convenient. And then one day some upper management changes, and the new person just decides they prefer an all in-person workforce and tells all the remote people to come back in or be let go. For your sake, I hope you find an opportunity that is 100% in-person. And I also hope those hybrid environments become fewer and farther between.
> I think the long-term response is going to be more sorting of companies into all-remote or all in-person, with fewer companies in the "hybrid" space that's so common today.
I think the long-term is going to be a small percentage of fully-remote (mostly new co's), a small percentage of full office (mostly legacy co's) and a big plurality of hybrid companies where everyone is mandated to come to office on the same days of the week. I am seeing more and more SV companies taking that approach.
> As soon as one person goes remote, the in-person experience is significantly degraded for everyone else
"Remote work" didn't start with "work from home" it started with offshoring and satellite offices.
Why is it acceptable to "significantly degrade the in office experience" when it benefits the company but not acceptable when it benefits the employees?
I call BS. I'm not commuting to an office just to be on calls with people in other timezones for a majority of my time there.
I would argue that the reason "remote wins" is that to get the full benefit of working in person you really need 100% of your team to work in the same building on the same hours. As soon as one person goes remote, the in-person experience is significantly degraded for everyone else.
Thus, as soon as company allows "hybrid", the people who prefer remote go remote and the in-person experience quickly degrades. This starts a spiral where people on the margin -- who still prefer 100% in person! -- decide it's no-longer worth coming in, which in turn degrades the experience further and pushes more people to give up on the office, until there are very few people left coming in.
It doesn't take very many people to set off this spiral: in my anecdotal experience, once a team goes 10-20% remote, the office is pretty useless.
So what I see is there's a "tyranny of the minority" effect. I think the long-term response is going to be more sorting of companies into all-remote or all in-person, with fewer companies in the "hybrid" space that's so common today.