In an all-else-being-equal world, yes I can see the tradeoffs.

The problem is that Elon has already destroyed the trust that should’ve existed between him and his newfound employees. It shouldn’t be surprising that in such a relationship any managerial decisions are viewed with extreme skepticism towards their motivation.

Not to mention all of the text messages we’ve already seen that already explain the motivation behind this move. Those were just one of the things that destroyed the trust.

It is my understanding that Twitter has been extremely friendly towards remote work.

Switching that up from one day to the next is just inhuman cruelty without empathy. I’m not even taking any kind of legal perspective, just a purely ethical one. The disruption to employee’s lives can be enormous.

I’m so happy to live in a country where this would be quite illegal to do.

I love working remotely, I definitely feel like I am more productive and pretty much all of my colleagues feel the same way. Perhaps individually, we all are more productive. However, that said…as a team we are simply not as productive as we were prior to the pandemic. No one wants to acknowledge it, but it’s true. I suspect we are not the only ones.

At some point someone in a decision making role is going to see it too, and at that time we will all be disappointed.

Taking the benefit away from employees currently exercising it (with zero grace period) is a little different than someone joining a company knowing they don't do remote work from the start.

I'm not saying it makes Elon Musk a bad person (I think he's a bad person for plenty of other reasons), but I do think it's a poorly thought out move on his part that will cause some of the better employees that survived the layoffs to quit.

It’s fair to critique someone who just upended the lives of all these people.

It's fine for new management to have new business philosophies and want to implement them. But the way they are implemented matters as well.

I’m not sure if I’m comfortable judging the “fairness of critiquing”, but it’s a business under new ownership. Changes are going to happen.

With three hours notice? A policy change that takes place that very morning delivered at 2am?

I'm happy to judge the critiques of that as "fair", and the changes themselves as "irresponsibly implemented".

Ending remote work? Whatever. I disagree, but it's his business.

Ending remote work with 3 hours notice? He's an asshole.

And it's okay to bitch about "new management" doing harmful things

I'd wager most of us can imagine alternatives because we lived alternatives. We've figured out a method that works better for us and don't want to go back to losing hours a week for what we expect will have negative value (lower productivity, happiness, etc).

Further, this edict is coming from someone that is presumable working remote now (for at least one company) and will continue to do so indefinitely. It's only natural to push back on that.

I'm reading the same comments, and there seems to be a reasonable amount of thoughtful writing too. In addition, there are sarcastic/scornful comments in the other direction too, yours included ("We get it, HN, you like remote work a lot and can't imagine any alternative."). Try not to get focused on individual snarky comments, because doing that makes those comments a bigger part of the conversation.

Agreed. I have been reading HN for a while, and the overwhelming tone here is definitely "screw the manager/CIO/CEO" together with "If I have to go into the office, I will quiet quit, quit without notice, sabotage my employer", etc. It is truly shocking.

I feel many on HN simply can't appreciate the great working conditions the IT industry has compared to other industries (health care, food service, social services, etc). Getting paid over $100K a year and crying about going to the office? Wow, just wow. Imagine how nurses feel getting much lower pay that are forced to go to work and deal with sick/unruly people...

> HN simply can't appreciate the great working conditions the IT industry has compared to other industries

These conditions don't happen by accident or by the goodwill of employers. They happen because people in the industry have such a hard attitude toward management. Stop pushing back and all these conditions will suddenly disappear.

Your example of nurses is a good one. In some countries they have excellent conditions. In other countries, they have very poor conditions. Their impact on society is the same everywhere, but different historical events have allowed them to have their current work experience.

I don't know where you work/worked before, but I've only had 1 "bad boss" in my +30yr IT career. Even that boss did not rise to the level of "bad bosses" constantly criticized here on HN. Most/all of my bosses have been extremely understanding about work-life balance, family commitments, teamwork, collaboration, etc. Seems I been very lucky compared to the vast number of HN comments.

> These conditions don't happen by accident or by the goodwill of employers. They happen because people in the industry have such a hard attitude toward management.

I call baloney on this. It always cracks me up how wrong people are about management’s attitude about them. Been in management at upper levels across multiple orgs, and not once have I ever heard discussions about “how we can screw our team”.

All I know is that when you have within a few weeks nearly 15k+ former Facebook, Twitter, Stripe, and (name the next SV company to layoffs) folks entering the job market…if you are still employed, you might want to lay low for a while and count your blessings, because there is going to be a hundreds of impressive resumes for every open position in tech that comes open for the next 12-18 months.

Rage quitting would be really really stupid right now. You’ll end up replacing your cushy 6-figure tech gig with a lovely career slinging hash and eggs for minimum wage plus tips.

The takeaway is that nurses should get higher pay as compensation for being unable to not WFH. Not that everybody else should feel glad that they aren't getting screwed to the same extent.