11
votes
What Twitter’s move to shutter offices signals for Big Tech
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- Authors
- Chris Stokel-Walker, Jason Parham, Matt Burgess, Garrett M. Graff, Steven Levy, Arielle Pardes, Gilad Edelman
- Published
- Aug 3 2022
- Word count
- 609 words
I've been working remotely since 2018, and it's been encouraging to see more opportunities for remote work over the past few years. In the past it often felt like it was considered a "perk" for senior, long term employees, so it was much harder to find a position as a junior, part time worker. I can't imagine every working in an office again - even ignoring COVID risk, I'm much more productive when I can conserve my energy by skipping commutes.
Plus after so many companies going remote during COVID, it will hopefully be harder for companies to say that remote work is unreasonable as a disability accommodation. Lots more jobs have opened up to disabled folks like me.
I get that certain things can be harder remotely, and that support jobs may disappear - both are issues that need to be addressed. But there were a lot of aspects of going to the office that were bad, too. Things that actively excluded people from the workforce.
This isn’t good news for me as someone working in tech that hates working remotely (I don’t want to be inside my house for an extra 8 hours per day, it’s too close to house arrest). I’m able to be productive if I stick to what I already know. But I recently switched to embedded/firmware. I go into the office every day but none of my team members do. So it’s really hard to get up to speed. There are some nice people that show up and the food is good, so I’ll keep commuting in. But in the future, maybe near future if I can’t make things work, I’m going to look specifically for companies and teams that are not working remotely. If I ever found a tech startup it’ll be hybrid, not remote, even though remote is easier to hire for and cheaper.
Yeah onboarding remotely is a pain point. Especially for juniors/new grads. I feel like I picked up a lot of signals and conventions from in-person, from actual software related concepts to just "when do I stop working" - when everyone else in the office fucks off. Fridays? Yeah, leave earlier. I can only imagine it's much harder when the closest thing is... the slack indicator for being online?
That being said, I feel like hybrid (as in, you have to come in some days but not others) is the worst of both worlds. Employees are still required to live in a radius around the office, but at the office, there often isn't the critical mass to make the office experience worthwhile. You end up with half of your team not being in at any particular day, just from probability.
That depends on the policy. It could be something like "unless you have no meetings, you're expected to be in Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday". And living in a radius around the office isn't so bad if you're already in a high density area. Hybrid in Silicon Valley wouldn't be too hard because you already have a lot of skilled tech workers there and they also will want to live there for reasons other than work. NYC might have a similar deal. Tons and tons of people and they will enjoy the city on its own. And now that remote is such a viable option the people applying to an in-person job are more likely to be the kinds of people that seek that out specifically.
But trying to hire in-person for a medium sized city in the mid-west won't be so easy.
Pair programming doesn't work for everyone, but I found it a great way to get up to speed and get to know my coworkers. Is there some way you could schedule sessions with co-workers where you meet at the office and work together on some task that you want to learn from them?
I’ve done it a couple of times for maybe 30 minutes, but I feel like I need more attention than that. I want someone around passively for 8 hours. I’ve had that before at multiple jobs as I learned web development. It think it was key to my ability to learn very quickly.
The team I’m on is willing to help me, but doesn’t seem eager to help me. When I’ve helped onboard people I usually reach out periodically and tell them in advance I’m setting aside time to help them. But the team I just joined isn’t like that.
I should probably just make greater demands of my coworkers (the one who was onboarding me speaks of professional requests as “burning social capital” so I don’t ask him for much). But it’s disheartening that my manager isn’t getting the ball rolling. There is definitely some dysfunction there. Thankfully my manager’s manager who joined at the same time as me feels the same way.
Not just big tech either, tbf. I've taken a job doing Linux support for a small business in the UK (<15 staff) and they permanently shut their offices back in 2020, and have gone fully remote. By all accounts it's working out quite well for them!
Yeah, it’s every sector.
I work in local government and they were on the verge of building a new building complex for everyone to work in, rather than being spread across downtown in 10 different buildings.
They put that on hold to do an assessment of who actually needed to be in the office and who could work from home.
Interesting to hear that. The UK government are very against home working (gotta keep that coffee shop economy alive!), and my friends who work in our local government are expected to be in the office more than not. I know a lot of people whose organisations have returned to at least hybrid work, if not fully back in the office. Though I suppose even with hybrid situations you don't need the same level of office space as before.
I will say I’m in the U.S., where local governments have a whole lot more autonomy than they do in the U.K.
So I’m sure it varies by which local government you’re working for in the U.S., but in my area there’s also a big worker shortage so they have been upping the pay rates while also trying to make the public sector (which pays a lot less than the private sector) more attractive.