Some people are extremely sensitive to the issue of the remote work, like it is some kind of inalienable right, and any (perceived) threat to it makes them want to grab a pitchfork and proteat.
I don't get it. Things are simple. The employer sets the terms, where you work and how the work is paid. The employee either accepts the terms or walks away. Sometimes the sides engage in negotiations, where the side with more leverage receives an advantage (like a valuable hire can get a pay raise our rights to work remote in an office-first company, for example). Why make so much drama out of it? If you don't like to work in office, find a remote job, end of story.
Because the collective bargaining power of people who prefer to work in offices has been shattered and the remote workforce is fighting back as a collective. There's a lot of drama because the stakes are incredibly high. Pro-office workers had successfully promoted the idea that their model of work should be subsidised by an average of 10 hours a week of unpaid labour (called commuting) and massive government infrastructure spending. That is asking workers to sacrifice north of a year of their lives unpaid. Somebody going from a WFH job to a 1 hour commute at the same salary is de facto taking a massive hourly paycut in the middle of high inflation while having their work hours greatly extended. It's easier to push for a change in work conditions than an increase in pay because working in an office is such a massive inefficiency that cutting it is the easiest place for a company to save money. "Voting with your feet" is less useful than getting a bunch of others to vote with theirs.
Collective action being used to bargain a better deal for workers is a simple enough concept.
I think there's a few obvious responses to your comment. First of which is that switching jobs is not as easy as you make it sound, even in the tech industry. There's still a lot of effort that must be put into interviewing and it takes quite a few weeks unless you get lucky. It becomes even more difficult when you need arrangements due to a disability, visa sponsorship, future maternity/paternity leave, etc. Second, it's an expression of frustration. A company can have an excellent outlook, competent leadership, good technical innovation, and great financial health. But a deal-breaking change in arrangements (such as having to return to the office when that's difficult/uncomfortable for the employee) is saddening. It's natural to be intellectually/emotionally invested in your employer after putting effort into them and closely following their growth. Frustration is natural after seeing someone make a shortsighted decision, and most people will want to try and talk that person out of it.
I totally get that but come on.. if you can get into FANG you literally don’t have any job security fears. Don’t mention edge cases that may affect a few people but for the vast majority? Please.. the most pampered group of workers in tech. I would understand if this was non tech, and I’m not familiar with outside of US, but this is a non issue.
IT workers at FAANG is the edge case tbf. I get that you bring it up because of the article, but even the the average FAANG employees can spend over a month interviewing.
I think they naturally replace fear of getting fired with fear of not getting a bigger stock grant every year, and end up in the same place via hedonic treadmill.
"The employer sets the terms, where you work and how the work is paid. The employee either accepts the terms or walks away."
And employers can go on setting the terms of where people work; they are just going to have to do it facing the prospect they are going to lose a LOT of employees now that we've gotten the chance to work from home, made it work, and have spent considerable personal money optimizing our home offices and family lives around this WFH reality we've had.
Remote work was always a desired thing, but companies would always make the case that it would affect productivity and the bottom line. The pandemic showed that is simply not true. In fact, the opposite happened - productivity increased, and many companies showed record profits. Now that things are returning to normal, companies are going back to the same argument, which is no longer valid. It may not be an inalienable right, but after the pandemic it should very much be an option at most, if not all, companies.
If you don't like to work in office, find a remote job, end of story.
That's exactly what Apple's director did. He resigned to find a remote job. There is no drama in that, other than it being reported and people talking about it. Many workers (myself included) simply refuse to go back into the office. It's quickly becoming an archaic social norm that you have to have your butt in an office chair to be productive. That simply isn't true. The employer has the right to set their work terms, just as the worker has the rights to set their work terms too.
Well, lets see duckduckgo search the largest tech companies back to office dates...
> Google tells employees to return to offices in April
> Apple sets April 11 date for return to in-person work for corporate ...
> Microsoft Returning to the Office on Feb. 28 as Covid Cases Decline
I doubt they decided independently on a back to office date in the same ~1 month timeframe, remember these same folks had an anti poaching agreement and set limits on engineer salaries. They colluded to control engineers and they'll collude to force them back to the office if they feel it's best* for their industry.
Unless employees have a similar level of coordination and control, for example a cross industry union, they will continue to be pushed around. If people don't make a big deal of these moves the company can withstand the few hold outs quitting.
*I doubt best for "the industry" is best for the consumer. Best for them is probably most controllable pliable workforce.
> I doubt they decided independently on a back to office date in the same ~1 month timeframe
Given the reason for office closures was covid, I'd guess that companies in the same geographical area would make similar decisions about when it was appropriate to return to office work. It would be more surprising to me if large companies with similar decision-making throughout the pandemic, in the same geographical area, had drastically different timelines.
Because actions have consequences and action at a scale sets norms. Considering he has the choice to walk away and is exercising it, it is sending the signal to the market that forcing people to return to office will have consequences. If he doesn't and everyone doesn't, it just kills the work-from-home momentum at large.
In fact I am grateful to him for doing so because I am not in a position to do so myself but would certainly like to reap the benefits of such actions.
You will also likely reap not only the benefits of such actions, but also the consequences, because fully remote companies have little reason to choose employees living in a high cost places like Silicon Valley over remote developers from far cheaper places who will agree to work for 1/4 of the compensation paid to office workers.
Yep. Which is why I walk away from companies that are not WFH flexible. No pitchforks wanted or required. As for drama: there seems to be an equivalent amount of drama on both sides of this issue. I have seen people who want to force everybody to work in the office just because they prefer it that way. I suspect there is a fair amount of incompetent micro-managing middle managers in that group. While competent middle managers are flexible and wants to do whatever makes sense for the team, negotiating a solution that works for everybody.
Because we would all like companies to treat us like adults and let us work from home. Our company has done just fine with WFH - amazingly, even - but they want us back in the office because they fundamentally don't trust us.
Many adults take pride at working several remote jobs simultaneously, slacking off and faking productivity at every one of them, check news from a few months ago.
> I don't get it. Things are simple. The employer sets the terms, where you work and how the work is paid. The employee either accepts the terms or walks away.
The employer makes an offer. Every job should be one where all parties see it as a fair exchange of value.
For a majority in software engineering, offers are not that hard to come by. There is an onus on both employer and employee to ensure the exchange of value continues to remain fair.
Things are not simple though, because people are messy. We’re all different. We need slightly different things. We have different challenges we’re working with.
Remote work has been a dream for some, and a reality for a small group. The pandemic forced a trial under less than ideal circumstances and productivity generally didn’t suffer (sometimes it went up).
The desire to work in an office or remote is something I keep finding differs person to person. If you mandate either all remote or all in an office you’re going to annoy someone.
We’re human. We need different things.
If your employer is refusing, in this industry you have options.
“Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.”
I don't understand why your comment is written so argumentatively. The person talked about in the article didn't grab a pitchfork. He decided to walk away because he wasn't happy with the employer changing the terms from what he was happy with. That's completely within his right as an employee.
I have a number of colleagues who have resigned because they don't want to go back to the office. Nothing about any sort of inalienable right BS. They just prefer remote work now after doing it for 2 years and they're no longer content with having to work at the office anymore. And honestly, my company is losing out far more than they are with them leaving.
> If you don't like to work in office, find a remote job, end of story.
That's exactly what's happening (in the linked story).
I think the drama comes because there's a cost to quitting your job and finding a new one. It's annoying to say the least, and if the only reason you have to do it is because the company is making what will undoubtedly be seen in a few years as a huge, obvious, frankly stupid mistake about their remote work policy, it rises to the level of a pain in the ass worth arguing about.
Especially for someone in a director/lead position at Apple, it’s quite common for a change like this to be accompanied with an explanation to their team. MacRumors and The Verge are the ones who turned it into a story.
sounds like that's what this fellow is planning to do. I don't mind if companies want a return to office, but some of us don't want to go in if we can avoid it.
I don't get it. Things are simple. The employer sets the terms, where you work and how the work is paid. The employee either accepts the terms or walks away. Sometimes the sides engage in negotiations, where the side with more leverage receives an advantage (like a valuable hire can get a pay raise our rights to work remote in an office-first company, for example). Why make so much drama out of it? If you don't like to work in office, find a remote job, end of story.