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 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.