Labor laws in the US are designed for companies to skirt around the spirit of the law to satisfy the letter of the law. Probably to prevent rioting in the street from making people realize they haven't won the change they thought. Case in point, certain benefits that kick in at 40 hours to you know help people out.

Companies responded by saying awe shucks, guess we will only schedule you 39 hours and if you want more you have to work another job. Oh and the law only cares about hours done at one job so doesn't matter if you are working 120 hour weeks you only get part time benefits.

> when I have my 2 programmers in office

I'd like to think that you see "my 2 programmers" as "my team" but I've come to expect phrasing like "when we have our 2 programmers in office". That perspective emphasizes that we're all in this together, rather than serfs working for the benefit of the lord.

The "my programmers" phrasing plays into my prejudice that one reason you like having "your programmers" in office is the exhilaration you feel in seeing them at your beck and call.

Sounds like you don't have a lot of remote work experience.

The majority of my career (years before the pandemic) has been remote work. I find in office work painfully slow. I pair program quite often remote, and when someone gets stuck we also "just talk". Honestly I prefer screen sharing to leaning over someone's shoulder (much easier to doing supporting work in parallel).

I find it really depends on the type of org though. Large corporate places do tend to suffer from remote work because so much of the work is performative anyway. Remote small companies and startups the velocity is very high, but you do need more senior people capable of independent work.

Especially when you factor in the easy of "after hours" work, the amount of emergency stuff I've shipped around midnight is incomparable to the 'in office' equivalent.

Though I suspect the key word here is "my 2 programmers", I find managers don't feel like their doing work unless they're physically watching it get done.

Not understanding how to run a remote team is not the same as remote teams not being effective in principle.

> I know its unpopular to say, but when I have my 2 programmers in office, we get sooo much more done than at home. Someone gets stuck and we don't message/call, we just talk.

The technology exists to "just talk" in high-definition audio and video. If somebody isn't asking for help when they're stuck that's a people problem, not a remote work problem. There are several possible reasons for their avoidance; if multiple people are exhibiting the same behavior it could be cultural (specific to your workplace, not the person's upbringing). Using physical presence to force their hand is curing the symptom, not the underlying cause.

Why take weekends off? Why take nights off? There are probably teams in some basement in china out working you right now. Don't you want a worker that can commit fully to your product? Have you measured hit to output from producing and rearing offspring? Those are jobs for the broodmares not engineers! Specialize specialize specialize!

> if you want to justify WFH, introverted-like people do not get the same level of benefit as extroverted-like people in this situation

I'm introverted and did just fine in an office, because the company culture was that coworkers all talked to each other about how they preferred to work (preferably no more often than once a quarter) and then respected that. When we moved to WFH during lockdown, that practice continued.

I've also WFH at remote-first companies that did not practice, encourage, or enforce ICs communicating to find and document better ways to work together, and have not been served remotely as well by the result.

So you're saying we should only put extroverted people in the office and introverted people get to WFH? ;)

That's not a global issue though - I have people who I have worked with for years, we're highly productive and we've never met in person.

Especially these days where it's soooo easy to chat, video call, share screens, etc.

Sounds like your problem is that management hasn't provided the right tools to be productive.

Do they live in an exurb

To some, being independent of a finite and politically unstable resource like oil is woke.

It was abundantly clear that one of Iran's methods would be to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

Sadly, there are people in charge who think the former and ignored the latter.

I love WFH but I'd also rather we not blow up schools.

And all he had to do was make it too expensive to even travel to your usual working location.

Truly the hero we deserve.