> We've now tried every point on the spectrum: fully remote, hybrid and fully in-person. So now we don't have to worry if we're being luddites: in-person YC just really is the best.
How was this determined to be best?
(Obviously, they haven't controlled for variables like the switch to 4 smaller batches, and the high percentage of startups all doing one exciting thing (AI). And do they realize the costs. And is it best for some people, and not for others.)
A lot of the comments in here are about the debate on whether companies should be remote or in-person.
That's an important debate but orthogonal to what I wrote. The YC batch is not a company. It doesn't really have a close analogue, but if you forced me to choose, I'd say that doing YC is more similar to going to college than working at a company. And as all we all know, while many companies are staying fully remote, hardly any university is.
Having now done this back-to-back, I can tell you exactly the ways in which in-person YC turned out to be better than remote YC.
1). Most founders in remote YC didn't make strong connections with their batchmates. When I ask founders from remote batches "how many founders in your batch are you still close with?", they typically give an answer that's 0-3. When I ask founders from in-person batches the same question, it's 10+.
2). When YC really works, it's because it not only conveys some factual advice, but changes the way founders think and behave.
When founders go through in-person batches, they're usually significantly different by the end of the batch - tougher, savvier, and more formidable. Whatever causes that did not translate well to zoom.
3). In-person YC is simply more fun. YC has always been in part about being fun experience, because startups need to be fun or they'd be too difficult and demoralizing. Zoom is very effective for communicating information, but no one has fun at Zoom parties.
> YC is more similar to going to college than working at a company.
The 3 ways you mentioned are also critical for a successful company.
1. Strong connections: you want to make strong connections in your company. That is what your network is and those connections help you in countless ways like referrals, job search or mentorships.
2. A company with "tougher, savvier, and more formidable" employees can wipe the competition against a company who doesn't have this kind of workforce. If zoom didn't work for YC to foster this, then why do you think it will do the trick for companies?
3. More fun - I really prefer a workplace which is fun than the one which is not. A fun workplace also helps with stronger connections with colleagues (#1).
My actual experience also aligns with these observations. In-person workplaces really produced stronger connections, more fun and better/stronger teams. Fully remote companies simply never had that level of camaraderie.
I've come to the same conclusion - having thoroughly enjoyed remote work for the first ~year of Covid, I realized it was a net negative on many long-term aspects I valued.
I do believe remote work can "work" - so can four day work weeks (probably even three day) and many other arrangements. Companies and individuals can do it and not go bankrupt.
But I think to reach your fullest potential as a team/company/unit, you simply need to spend a lot of time together. If you don't want to reach your full potential, then that's a choice you can make.
Whereas in any thread about WFH it seems that 95% of HN has concluded that remote just really is the best. Case close. No further study needed. The only reason to think otherwise is corporate greed.
I suspect that people in both the main "sides" have decided what they'd prefer, either for their own individual interests, or some gut feel about what's better for the organization. And people feel threatened by moves against what they've decided.
(Disclosure: I'm pro-WFH overall, or, ideally, my own version of hybrid. I can see some benefits to some uses of in-person. I can also see WFH problems that still need creative solutions. I'm also aware that, in dialogue around this, some other people might not be playing the same game of nuance and problem-solving.)
Asking me to come into the office extends my workday by three or four hours, and when I’m at the office and not collaborating it’s just a stream of distractions; constant motion in my peripheral vision, people on calls, it’s a busy place!
From my perspective WFH saves me so much time, money, and stress that I’d be insane to not insist on it. Why would I read a study that doesn’t take my perspective into account?
WFH saves me tens of thousands a year. Any conversation that ignores the financial impact of return to office from my point of view is worthless.
Pre-covid, and this WFH/RTO conversation, the focus was on hating the open office floor plan, which does suck, I agree ... The most repeated anecdote was how you're coding, in zen, and someone taps you on the shoulder or starts talking, and the entire day is lost. Thus, the alternative was to have your own office, like at Stack Overflow.
I don’t know much about YC but I do know it isn’t a regular working environment. It’s a lot more intense and hands-on, qualities which indeed tend to be better in-person.
It’s also for only 11 weeks. Other companies probably want to be always be intense and hands-on and have the YC atmosphere, but that’s actually a terrible way to manage a company, a recipe for getting everyone to burnout and quit, and even if people stay after awhile the intensity will cool off.
I don’t doubt YC is better in-person, but also that your typical boring company is better remote.
I can believe that seeking advice from angels works better in person, but it’s not evidence that writing code works better in person than on the Maker’s Schedule.
YC doesn't exactly need to do double-blinded controlled studies to come to some conclusions.
I'm sure they get lots of feedback from the companies in a batch, not to mention the partners' own assessments of how things work. It seems entirely reasonable to me then, after they did have different sessions with different configurations, to point to particular points and say "in-person just worked way better".
Is this a serious question? For one thing, every founder will obviously know whether they are in-person or not, so it's not even possible to do a single-blind study.
I think it's always going to be an emotional/tribal thing. Some people are wired more socially and get value from the bustle and serendipity of an office, some people prefer to be more alone in their comfort zone.
What do you have in mind for a quantitative assessment?
You can make an argument in the other direction too - prove that WFH is better than RTO, or else we should return to the default that modern society has worked in for the massive majority of our history. There is not reliable data on either side - some of the most important things are also incredibly hard to measure. Will company X do better choosing C++ or Rust? Static or dynamic typing? These questions aren't easily answerable with a study.
I'm certain CEOs of FAANG are looking at stats to make these decisions. And what many WFH diehards miss is that your (or my) individual productivity is irrelevant, because all that matters is the output of the company as a whole. I can work really efficiently on the wrong thing and/or not spend time helping others in a way that my overall output for the company, not myself, is worse vs. in-office.
I am not surprised by that. Fully remote zoom based interaction only works for those who work in a silo and do not need much social interaction to get their job done. Some like a mid-senior software engineer. But many other roles really need social interactions and in-person time.
I have family members in SV who have started their own startup. Talking to them, "founder" seems to be a roll which needs a lot of social interactions and they are constantly networking. Right from raising money to making the first hires to finding the first customers. So no wonder YC batch finds in-person to be the best experience.
I did YC in w23 which was a hybrid batch (talks and office hours on zoom with weekly SF events). Speaking for myself, most of the value was in the in-person events and not the zoom talks. Talking to alumni from the fully remote batches, it's clear that they missed out on a big part of the YC experience.
They are not saying it is best in all circumstances. They are strictly saying it is best for a small startup. IE. it is best for the short term, sloppy business of getting a tech startup off the ground. This makes some sense to me as everything is less structured in a startup and remote work really does better when there is more structure in place and quality is more important.
To put it another way... In-person is best for the business in the short term and detrimental to their long term but it is a sacrifice startups make as they have no long term without the short term success so just punt all the long term stuff until they've made it that far.
It was determined the same way FAANG, Banks, and others have determined in-person is best: "haha, the economy is slowing, get back to the office you F*(&# losers".
Absolutely breathtaking level of cynicism from executive class that as soon as interest rates went up, hiring market cooled, and the power balance between workers & bosses swung back their way, suddenly in-office was "most productive".
100% vibes and "because we say so / we can get away with it".
I can’t speak for YC or FAANG management but as a regular software engineer I totally get where they’re coming from. I worked at a FAANG company through and after covid, the difference in teams productivity was noticeable. Not in the remote working favour.
I understand some people are more productive at home but I’m yet to see a _team_ that is more productive being remote. I lack the experience working in remote-first companies like gitlab though.
Depends on the project type and part of the lifecycle. Also depends on the team composition and office structure.
In my career I've generally been on teams spread across 3 continents and sit in open floorplan offices surrounded by other loud teams. So I commute into the office to be collocated with at-best 1/3 of my team, surrounded by unrelated noise.
In some ideal state where we were 100% in the same city, sat in a dedicated pod area without so much commotion & distraction, in-office might be great. I've never experienced this.
Even in that ideal state, it may likely turn out ideal team productivity happens at 3-4 days in-office, as there's time for coordination and then time for deep quiet work.
The top-down, C-suite level dictates are not based on what's most productive.
Oh, I've seen a team get completely obliterated by moving back to in person, even though everyone really did live in the same city and with reasonable commutes.
This was a startup, that had one big problem: a CEO that believed he was better than any and all of his workers at what the workers did. He also believed that collaboration was important, as through discussion, everyone would agree that he was right all along. You can imagine how unhealthy someone like that can be.
In a remote world, dealing with problem people is easier. The amount of acting one has to perform lowers. The lower visibility also allows people to self organize: Ignore coworker A as much as necessary, yet pair all day with coworker B, who is useful. Is someone very loud, or getting into other people's business? Being far from each other can help!
It didn't take 8 weeks in-office for all the coping that people were doing to become clear to everyone in the company. A CEO that was manageable via short interactions became an unavoidable thorn into the company's side, as remoteness covered their weaknesses. An open office didn't help matters. Everyone that wasn't a founder knew this was all untenable and quit.
So a team can definitely be far more productive being remote, as remoteness mandates far less gelling. Local conflict often has explosive results. People you dislike become far more tolerable. And really, every company ends up getting people like that, and sometimes chooses them over those that are team builders: I've seen my fair share of horrible managers that cost a company money in supposedly high performance, well known companies, and I have yet to see one getting a Pip out of it.
Sure. I have neither proper data nor a solution that would satisfy everyone. I left my comment only to show a dissenting voice in the HN engineering crowd. Someone reading HN might be under the impression WFH is universal choice of engineers. It’s not, some of us hate remote work.
I dunno, this thread seems to be a bunch of RTO hardos & CEO apologists. It does feel like some have begun to enjoy the taste of boots now that the job market has turned, but thats just my opinion.
I imagine the actual reason is the complete opposite of everything you said except for 'vibes'.
Just cause you can't imagine why anyone would care about being in person doesn't mean the only remaining reason is a greedy powertrip. You're just not being sufficiently imaginative.
Sure for a bootcamp or intensive project or whatever, in-person can have benefits.
For juniors and mentorship and whatever, sure helps there too.
But the lingering question is...
Why is it that everyone was super cool with hybrid & remote, even past COVID danger, but as soon as FAANG had massive layoffs we went from 2days to 3days to majority back in office at many tech companies?
And the east coast bank/fund/finance tech companies quickly dragged everyone else back to the office as soon as we all stopped quitting for FAANG jobs?
I can think of plenty of decent reasons that might be true? For instance perhaps over time a fully remote company, unless it employs mostly a certain type of very driven self motivated person, slows down and loses any semblance of a culture the longer it works remotely? That was certainly my experience.
Or perhaps all the managers, typically fairly extroverted people, get more depressed over time the longer their daily social interactions are just on video calls.
Or perhaps over time it's found that new hires do worse and worse without an office to bond with others in and a culture to absorb.
Etc. No shortage of plausible reasons.
Perhaps these companies were remote for a while because a lot of people were loud and annoying about it, and now a lot of them are quietly backpedaling to avoid offending the people who love it while reclaiming the benefits of an office?
Perhaps! I don't know. You'd have to ask them. One thing is for sure: there are a lot of plausible reasons besides 'evil'.
Zero Interest Rate Policy. Describes the US Federal Reserve interest rates for much of the last 20 years or so. Since interest rate to borrow is near zero, investing in very marginal businesses can be profitable.
On this thread - there's a VC guy I follow on twitter who otherwise sounds like a decent guy, but as the tech job market was collapsing ~9 months ago was literally posting "suits suits suits".
Aka - the old Wall St saying that when the economy turns and labor loses power, casual Fridays go out the window and everyone is back to wearing suits.
So I do think that the debate is all kayfabe. There is no data.
They really see remote/hybrid as just an accommodation like allowing jeans, paying for your lunch, or having yoga classes on site... and look forward to cutting it at any time of their choosing, when they can get away with it.
It’s easier to make blanket rules than do performance mgmt for managers.
If data shows some % of the company has been completely slacking off with WFH (or over employed etc) you could either hold mgmt accountable (but how? Fire all VPs for letting that happen? Fire all line managers?) or just make blanket policies…
That line of management of management is allowing incompetence to fester.
My spouse is at a shop that keeps ratcheting up the RTO days “because people aren’t abiding by the current RTO days”.
This of course is idiotic because the shirkers don’t get punished and everyone ends up worst off. In fact the people already complying are worst effected.
If you can’t count on managers to enforce rules then why have managers or rules?
I agree your question is relevant, but the problem is do directors want to acknowledge that the level below them is incompetent at performance mgmt at a small granularity? Because what does that say about them?
How was this determined to be best?
(Obviously, they haven't controlled for variables like the switch to 4 smaller batches, and the high percentage of startups all doing one exciting thing (AI). And do they realize the costs. And is it best for some people, and not for others.)