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[Fake]

it means "just because we did things one way for 50 years, but not have the ability to do things better, doesn't mean we need to regress"

Still silly no matter the context LOL.

And this have nothing to do with progress at all. People want comodity and facility, thats why they defend staying at homeoffice with teeths. They got their safe place at home and don't want to open their hand, thats all.

BTW a car is a more fast/efficient way of transport than a horse, Jesus dude I can't believe I need to had this conversarion at all.

edit: LOL at people here. I worked at homeoffice, but saying is more productive is way of the top. Is the company that normally measure that. And of course most of the people that work at homeoffice will defend this. Have your way.

 

[Celcius]

There's so much cringe in this thread

This is probably why some are there game are bad. They don't work.

REMOTE WORK IS ACTUAL WORK.

Welcome to the real world entitled babies.

Instead of treating 3.5 years of covid WFH as a super long temporary perk where you saved on commute time and spending money on gas, eating out and impressing people with new clothes, it's time to get your ass to the office. Most people still had to slog it to work even during covid wearing masks, using sanitizer stations and all, instead of waking up at 8:55 am to log into your corporate PC by 9 am.

No company would had ever put in writing covid WFH is a permanent thing for life. Even companies giving up the lease forcing workers to be at home, they might change their minds 5 years later and sign up for new office space.

Some people must be super anti-social not wanting to see or chat with coworkers. Let me guess. They all claim to be the most productive workers being lone wolves at home. Saving time on commuting, wasting money, ohhh and ahhhh I'm so much more refreshed and productive.

My company had a 2 year mandatory WFH, but a lot of us were itching to go back. There's only so many awful MS Teams meetings with people who never go on cam and dopey 2 minute icebreaker jokes where everyone on screen is staring in bordeom you can take.

Worker productivity now at lowest in 75 years: Report

Is remote, hybrid work to blame?

www.hcamag.com

American worker productivity is declining at the fastest rate in 75 years—and it could see CEOs go to war against WFH

EY-Parthenon's Gregory Daco reveals what's going on with the American worker's worst slump of the post-World War II era. It's not all about remote work, he says.

finance.yahoo.com

REMOTE WORK IS REAL WORK.

Listen, if some of y'all like going to the office and working with folks there's nothing wrong with that. You have my support. But I don't understand why y'all act like EVERYONE should have the same opinion that you have. There are perks to working from home. This is an undeniable fact. Companies didn't go out of business during the pandemic when people worked from home. In fact, many companies saw an increase in productivity. My company is one of them (one of the largest companies in north america). In fact, we sold our local office to save the money on the building lease and we're STILL productive.

"Oh, but company culture..."
"If I have to do it then everyone should have to do it..."
"You're not even working if you don't go into an office..."

Some of you need to learn to accept change and open your mind to more possibilities that just what you've been doing all your lives. You can WFH, get your work done, and then you can have friends/acquaintances/a life OUTSIDE OF WORK.

Also, I completely agree with everyone saying how awful open floorplan offices are. Why? Because I've done that too. It sucks.
I feel like half the people in this thread are managers trying to justify their real estate purchases by trying to make it look glamourous and belittle WFH.

 

[Kaleinc]

Also, with techie people doing game code and art which surely can be large files, doesn't anyone who does any kind of job (not just game industry people) involving big files being downloaded or uploaded want to be in the office?

I just use finance and MS software from home and even these files can be a slog uploading, downloading and saving on the corporate servers from home VPN style. At the office it is super fast you dont even notice it. its always so much faster, more efficient and the connection is more stable at the office.

Ever heard of remote desktop, ssh connection?
No one moves servers and dbs from work to home pcs.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

There's so much cringe in this thread

REMOTE WORK IS ACTUAL WORK.

REMOTE WORK IS REAL WORK.

Listen, if some of y'all like going to the office and working with folks there's nothing wrong with that. You have my support. But I don't understand why y'all act like EVERYONE should have the same opinion that you have. There are perks to working from home. This is an undeniable fact. Companies didn't go out of business during the pandemic when people worked from home. In fact, many companies saw an increase in productivity. My company is one of them (one of the largest companies in north america). In fact, we sold our local office to save the money on the building lease and we're STILL productive.

"Oh, but company culture..."
"If I have to do it then everyone should have to do it..."
"You're not even working if you don't go into an office..."

Some of you need to learn to accept change and open your mind to more possibilities that just what you've been doing all your lives. You can WFH, get your work done, and then you can have friends/acquaintances/a life OUTSIDE OF WORK.

Also, I completely agree with everyone saying how awful open floorplan offices are. Why? Because I've done that too. It sucks.
I feel like half the people in this thread are managers trying to justify their real estate purchases by trying to make it look glamourous and belittle WFH.

And you why productivity looked so good during COVID? Because anyone laid off isn’t counted in worker hours and output, while everyone still working skewed to a lot of companies where people sat at home buying tons of shit whether it’s tech downloads or boxes of cereal. Our company couldn’t keep in stock in most of our brands because people were COVID hoarding and we even cut down on weekly promos. So people still bought more stuff at regular price. It was so wacky nobody in the office could explain why sales of some brands doubled except for people being at home, using it more and hoarding. All that came to a stop last year or two with people hybrid back to the office and buying habits back to normal.

Bosses are realizing that wfh productivity isn’t improving in 2023 with wfh or hybrid wfh, so it’s back to the office like precovid days.

 

[DragonNCM]

I think they need to focus on training AI to develop games SO THEY CAN FUCKING FIRE THIES LAZY BASTARDS

 

[Harlock]

Put mask mandates and they will be happy.

 

[Embearded]

Why the home office hate in here? Are you butthurt that you can't do it yourselves?
Also, to the posters of stupid comments like "my parents drove X hours to work, you should do it too", my grandmother gave birth alone, in a ditch outside of her village. Don't take your wives to the clinic, let them give birth at home alone.
Stupid logic huh?

If the company made promises to their employees they should keep them, or face the consequences of their decisions. Of course if what they want is soft layoffs, they found the best way.

Having to go to the office for 2 days a week is not that big of thing for me, but i can only imagine it from my side and of course if some people moved away because of a spouse or special conditions in general, as the article says, they need to address it asap.

Home office has pros and cons, for the employee and the employer too. They need to discuss, form a policy and move forward.

 

[chromhound]

This working from home nonsense needs to stop

Hell no

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

It never ceases to amaze me the amount of stupid takes and corporate shilling that goes on on Gaf.

He shits up WFH threads like clockwork every time with incredibly ignorant shit like this.

You can also have the concept of "core hours" for remote jobs.

Yeah I don't understand, nobody's working hours changed here, mine sure as fuck didn't, because the business still has business hours, not just because customers need to reach them, but also because it ensures everyone is working at the same time; I haven't seen any changes in working hours amongst me and my friends across multiple industries (creative, finance, IT, support, logistics), unless that was already a possibility before WFH.

 

[GeeseGoose]

If the remote working wasn’t enshrined in their contracts, or they accepted the contract with ambiguous or non commitl terms around remote work, then they’ve got no right to complain.

I have remote work enshrined in my contract and I will not be looking back, mainly because it’s a 3 hour plane commute to my work’s HQ or a 4 hour drive to their nearest drivable hub.

 

[BbMajor7th]

Awful takes in here. If you made massive life choices and took on serious financial responsibilities based on repeat assurances from your company that this was compatible with their expectations, only for them to turn around and retcon it a year later, you'd be pissed.

This isn't about being told to come into the office two days a week - no one cares about that - it's about moving your family to a new home eight hours away because the company said it was safe to do so and then completely fucking you and your family in the ass when they change their minds. 1000% on the company.

Made a decision in haste that they didn't properly game out and when they realised it wasn't workable punished the staff instead of shouldering responsibility for their own stupidity.

The affected employees should be pursuing a class action for constructive dismissal and Ubisoft should be firing the thick-as-pigshit directors that greenlit the move, built no, shit rolls downhill

 

[Kenneth Haight]

You're making a creative collaborative project, you need to be in the same room talking with eachother and giving immediate feedback to eachother.

<1ms delay on a video call doesn’t give you that?

 

[Sushi_Combo]

<1ms delay on a video call doesn’t give you that?

I don't get that post either. You know you can set up a teams or google meet session and have the exact same outcome.

 

[Camreezie]

Dont be naive, if you made life commitments based on the belief you werent expected in the office get that shit in writing

 

[BbMajor7th]

Dont be naive, if you made life commitments based on the belief you werent expected in the office get that shit in writing

The IGN article suggests it was. Also, +1 for 'it's your fault for being naive', rather than 'managers who make promises they can't honour are incompetent weasels".

 

[Team Andromeda]

As somebody who started WFM a couple years ago, I have no desire to ever return full time to the office or at the very least would go for a Hybrid position. Your personal and financial benefits from being able to WFM or Hybrid are incredible for modern times where everything is so expensive now.

WFM

• You get extra sleep because you don't have to worry about showering, getting dressed, making breakfast, and commuting to work.
• You don't have to pretend to be busy when your work load is light. If you get your work done early, you get to enjoy the rest of your afternoon.
• Less stress.
• You don't have your boss breathing down your neck.
• The flexible hours gives you more freedom with childcare if you're a parent.
• All of this leads to getting hours of your day back.

Work in Office

• Have to get up much earlier to account for traffic and your morning routine.
• A portion of your paycheck has to go to gas money for transportation, or public transportation.
• Have to sit in traffic on your way home.
• Morning and Afternoon communicate can account for up to 3 hours of your day, depending on the individual.
• You'll likely have to crunch harder and at least put on the act of a better performance, leading to higher stress level.
• If you have a baby/toddler you'll have to put them in daycare fulltime, which in Massachusetts can cost an average $1,500 a month (that's on the lower end btw). If you can't afford it, either you or your partner have to quit their job to be a stay at home parent.

Now I completely understand the notion of having your employees work in office 1-2 times a week for things like Team Building, Meetings, Presentations, etc. But considering all the points above, why the fuck would any person who's been WFM for the past 1-3 years, ever have the desire to return to office full time? Like how dare they not want to go back to being miserable like us.







I can confidently say I've been just as productive in the house since I started WFM, and I'm a lot more happier these days.

Facts says a different story . The Civil service in UK is 6% less productive since working from home .

 

[Meicyn]

FWIW, for reference.

Designing More Flexible Ways of Working at Ubisoft

Chief People Officer Anika Grant outlines Ubisoft’s framework for the Future of Work, a hybrid approach that gives teams more choice in how and where they work.

news.ubisoft.com

 

[BbMajor7th]

Facts says a different story . The Civil service in UK is 6% less productive since working from home .

Numerous other studies have shown different results. Four-day weeks are also good for business, but common sense rarely marries with facts.

 

[fran.fernandez]

They don’t have a contract? Is too many people .

Many of my friends work at Ubisoft (not Montreal) and their contract explicit say “home base”.
I also work in a big AAA and my contract is the same “home base”. People who didn’t update or had old contract can do hybrid or sometimes indeed they are asked to go back .

 

[Fafalada]

You know, if you work in some "open-office" environment, then I can totally understand why you wouldn't want to return there. Open-offices are the worst fucking shit corporate America has brought upon the world.

Sadly game studious have embraced open-offices without exceptions everywhere. And I agree - they hurt productivity more often than not.

 

[ReBurn]

When I had to pull my development teams back into the office it was based on data pulled from performance monitoring software and burndown rates. Only 22% of the team members were as productive or more productive working from home, mostly team leads picking up slack for their teams. 78% of team members had lower productivity based on their burndown metrics. I noticed the productivity drop off kept getting worse over time instead of leveling off after a 6-month adjustment period for work from home transition, so the company pushed tracking software to their laptops that I could use to see what they were doing on their laptops at any time I needed to. I could see when they were logged in, what applications were running, and I could get screenshots of what's on their monitors if I needed to.

The 78% were all self-reporting via engagement surveys that working from home was making them as-productive or more productive, but in reality they were not working as much or delivering as much. The burndown rates proved it. Then I saw why burndown rates were suffering. Some would log in to their laptops in the morning, open the thing they were supposed to be working on, and do nothing until they closed their laptops at the end of the day. Some would work half the day. Some would only work a few hours in morning or the evening, presumably working around caring for kids st home all day and not being able to work. Some would only log in for morning standup, then would go completely offline and try to cram everything in the day before demos.

Ended up firing 4 people after conversations about their performance and expectations didn't help. All of them were virtually unreachable during the workday or would answer calls from places like the grocery store, the beach, or some bike trail where they didn't have access to their work. All 4 were offended when I showed that I saw they weren't working and that I needed them to be available to their team members between 9 am and 4 pm. Fired one person for watching porn and listening to anime soundtracks via youtube on his company laptop all day. He said he was doing his work on his personal laptop while watching porn on his company laptop because he didn't want his wife to check his laptop and ask why his browser history was cleared. Using personal equipment for company business breaks our SOX compliance rules.

Now I run a hybrid schedule now where people are in the office two days per week for design, collab and demos. The teams decided themselves that If someone misses their burndown targets without a valid reason that their full team will have to work in the office every day for the next sprint. It keeps them engaged and communicating with each other and self-regulating because nobody wants to be the person that makes everyone come in. They keep their performance up to where it was pre-covid when they were in the office full time.

 

[kiphalfton]

Facts says a different story . The Civil service in UK is 6% less productive since working from home .

Because government employees are the shining example of efficiency to begin with.

 

[jorgejjvr]

I work fully remote and it's totally game changing for me and my family. So I can sympathize, but I've been here only 10 months, and previous to this it was full on office every day 9-5. 2 days only is very chill, this probably affects those that moved

 

[Barakov]

 

[jorgejjvr]

Also nothing wrong with office work

Nothing wrong with remote work

Nothing wrong with hybrid work

All of them can work out if done correctly, and some make more sense than others for specific roles. For example, I'm in software sales, I can do that from anywhere. You can easily track my metrics by how many calls and emails I do a day, a week, a month etc. I'm either working or I'm not. It's even more clear in actual sales, I'm either selling or I'm not, I'm hitting my monthly numbers/quota or I'm not.

Don't see anything wrong with all the different ways to work, and employees can look elsewhere. Plenty of options out there. Shitty if they promised something and are now doing something else but companies aren't your friends. I wish I had only 2 days in the office on my previous gig, they might have even kept me longer (I was already there for over 7 years)

 

[delfrickintree]

When I had to pull my development teams back into the office it was based on data pulled from performance monitoring software and burndown rates. Only 22% of the team members were as productive or more productive working from home, mostly team leads picking up slack for their teams. 78% of team members had lower productivity based on their burndown metrics. I noticed the productivity drop off kept getting worse over time instead of leveling off after a 6-month adjustment period for work from home transition, so the company pushed tracking software to their laptops that I could use to see what they were doing on their laptops at any time I needed to. I could see when they were logged in, what applications were running, and I could get screenshots of what's on their monitors if I needed to.

The 78% were all self-reporting via engagement surveys that working from home was making them as-productive or more productive, but in reality they were not working as much or delivering as much. The burndown rates proved it. Then I saw why burndown rates were suffering. Some would log in to their laptops in the morning, open the thing they were supposed to be working on, and do nothing until they closed their laptops at the end of the day. Some would work half the day. Some would only work a few hours in morning or the evening, presumably working around caring for kids st home all day and not being able to work. Some would only log in for morning standup, then would go completely offline and try to cram everything in the day before demos.

Ended up firing 4 people after conversations about their performance and expectations didn't help. All of them were virtually unreachable during the workday or would answer calls from places like the grocery store, the beach, or some bike trail where they didn't have access to their work. All 4 were offended when I showed that I saw they weren't working and that I needed them to be available to their team members between 9 am and 4 pm. Fired one person for watching porn and listening to anime soundtracks via youtube on his company laptop all day. He said he was doing his work on his personal laptop while watching porn on his company laptop because he didn't want his wife to check his laptop and ask why his browser history was cleared. Using personal equipment for company business breaks our SOX compliance rules.

Now I run a hybrid schedule now where people are in the office two days per week for design, collab and demos. The teams decided themselves that If someone misses their burndown targets without a valid reason that their full team will have to work in the office every day for the next sprint. It keeps them engaged and communicating with each other and self-regulating because nobody wants to be the person that makes everyone come in. They keep their performance up to where it was pre-covid when they were in the office full time.

Thanks for the insider scoop, Ubisoft manager!

All the posts in this thread about beneficial WFH are desperately lying to save their cushy gig. Nobody is buying it. All those long-winded posts are proof you waste all your time on the internet instead of working. Half of you dont even have a fucking job! Like those weekly unemployment verifications to make sure those bums are "job hunting." Bare minimum that is required.

Get to work!!!

 

[Fahdis]

How many boomers are in this thread? Its non-economical, pandering to Mr. Shekelstein and really just a waste of time when there is irrefutable fact that you are more productive at home.

I will never work in an office environment again. WFH or rejection to the employer. I am well established anyways, I'll just become an independent contractor if shit like this becomes the norm again.

 

[delfrickintree]

How many boomers are in this thread? Its non-economical, pandering to Mr. Shekelstein and really just a waste of time when there is irrefutable fact that you are more productive at home.

I will never work in an office environment again. WFH or rejection to the employer. I am well established anyways, I'll just become an independent contractor if shit like this becomes the norm again.

Youre just scared of your ultra chad boss yelling at you because youre slacking off again. Throwing out buzzwords like "irrefutable facts" isnt helping your overdue project get finished. Boomers built this country; you reaping the benefits while pretending to work and still complaining about it is the ultimate loser mentality. People with honest jobs dont have that essence, they exemplify production and integrity.

Also you cant hide from the ADL either, you will slave away at your office and pay your fair share of taxes! I have Mr. Shekelstein on speed dial.

 

[Sushi_Combo]

Youre just scared of your ultra chad boss yelling at you because youre slacking off again. Throwing out buzzwords like "irrefutable facts" isnt helping your overdue project get finished. Boomers built this country; you reaping the benefits while pretending to work and still complaining about it is the ultimate loser mentality. People with honest jobs dont have that essence, they exemplify production and integrity.

Also you cant hide from the ADL either, you will slave away at your office and pay your fair share of taxes! I have Mr. Shekelstein on speed dial.

We're not reaping any financial benefits lol what the fuck are you talking about.

 

[Fahdis]

Youre just scared of your ultra chad boss yelling at you because youre slacking off again. Throwing out buzzwords like "irrefutable facts" isnt helping your overdue project get finished. Boomers built this country; you reaping the benefits while pretending to work and still complaining about it is the ultimate loser mentality. People with honest jobs dont have that essence, they exemplify production and integrity.

Also you cant hide from the ADL either, you will slave away at your office and pay your fair share of taxes! I have Mr. Shekelstein on speed dial.

Lmao, let me guess you're either someone who thinks he's "manly" because he has to work with some form of labor to provide for the family or are some blue collar worker at a gas station in America. I don't look down at people like you, but you reek of inciting a class war against those who have intellectually built themselves over your lazy ass to actually do those jobs. You get paid for your laziness, lack of networking and perhaps opportunity due to geolocation. And, my "boss" also WFH.

Boomers didn't build this country you incompetent delinquent, it was mostly the Silent and Great Generation in the industrial boom building a framework for these idiots (assuming we are talking about America). They hold 57% of the wealth due to the economical times they grew up in after World War II. They squandered everything else for future generations from Millenials - Gen Z where we collectively hold 5% of all economical wealth. The only thing Boomers did was take away pensions, give you a mentality like this, ruined real estate, go to war against a boogeyman they create every few decades, fucked up the climate and actually stagnated pay. All they did was perpertuate the capitalist machines to make bots out of all of you.

Also, I'm a first generation immigrant and doing alot better than most "born Americans" with 3 acquired citizenships in 20 years that give me unlimited range in economic opportunity along with speaking 4 languages. Whats next? Trump speech next of building a wall on NeoGaf for you?

 

[Paltheos]

GAF feels so strongly on this subject lol.

The bottom line is the company gave assurances to its employees. "That they should have known better" is another matter (and based off the timeline maybe they couldn't have? I don't remember when companies reneging on this hit headlines). Obviously esp. for public companies survival comes first but if you're backing off on something you should have known would result in major life decisions for your people, you need to have a good response for it.

"Building a sense of collaboration" and its variants are *not* that answer. It's a good PR response for sure, but it's terrible for your employees and if that's all management gave them, they're right to be angry. This is a situation where you need to be honest with them. Was productivity down? Was the company having a hard time onboarding? If this is a performance-based issue then tell them.

Which is all assuming the company has a good reason. If the organization's using it as a means of impacting attrition without explicitly enacting layoffs for instance or for actually dumb reasons like trying to eke value out of a sunk cost (real estate) without considering the trade-off, those are other matters.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Numerous other studies have shown different results. Four-day weeks are also good for business, but common sense rarely marries with facts.

The is a official GOV report. I work in the Cilve service and can see it for myself . It's also a pain in the ass to get a hold of anyone these days , while you are out on hold due to ' extremely high level of calls'

 

[Team Andromeda]

Because government employees are the shining example of efficiency to begin with.

That's doesn't change the fact that since working from home , GOV depts are 6% less productive(the DVLA being a shinning example) It's not just GOV depts. Any time I need to phone EE or the likes of SKY, The bank You Are out on always put on hold, because apparently they are all 'experiencing a high level of calls'.

 

[Virex]

Why is IGN turning into Kotaku?

No one cares about IGN. So they turned to writing even more shit than they used to.

 

[xrnzaaas]

People can be lazy and not very productive in both home and work office. My opinion is you should reward and keep those who provide good results and allow them to work wherever and however they want. If you can't track whether your workforce is productive or not, then the problem is with you as their employer or boss.

 

[Hudo]

The goal of an employee should be to get the maximum amount of money (pay) while doing the minimum amount of work he/she can get away with, while the goal of management is to extract the maximum amount of work from its employees while paying them as little as possible.
I get the feeling that some people ITT have some sort of "loyalty" issue whenever someone wants get one over his/her company, which is weird. Employees should never be loyal to a company, we're not in the middle-ages, where being loyal to your craftsmanship guild actually had some merit.
If you like your work so much that you willingly and gleefully do overtime, then cool. Good for you. You're the exception. Not the norm. Don't generalize this to everyone.

People who are "unproductive" at home are also "unproductive" in an office, they just hide it better there. People who are "productive" will also be "productive" at home, maybe a bit less so than in an office (lower single-digit percent, if studies are to be believed) but will have an arguably better work-life balance. The hybrid model of spending most of the week at home and then come to the office for like two days a week or so is the way forward, I think. Some shit like meetings are better held physically, imho. Especially when these are more like technical brainstorm meetings or lectures or something. That's at least my experience.

People who scream the loudest about WFH "not being real work" are weird. Doesn't matter if you bullshit at home or bullshit in an office (bullshitting is actually much easier to accomplish in an office environment, imho).

 

[Drizzlehell]

Sounds like a legitimate grievance. Why are so many people wanting to just assume remote workers are lazy and whiney? I worked from home during the pandemic. It was still work. Like, a whole lot of work. I had to return pretty early on but my position's effectiveness really suffers remotely. That's not true for every gig, though. At the end of the day, because of technology, a whole lot of jobs can be done from home and that's pretty great. This gut reaction of wanting to see the labor of those who work from home as lesser is strange. It reminds me of my dad telling me about how some of his in-laws would look down on him because, even though he was more successful, the fact that his job didn't require physical labor made it somehow not as valid as the work that they did.

Yeah, that's some blue collar bullshit from people who are acting like they're salt-of-the-earth guys that are the backbone of their countries, when in reality they probably do work that is just as mundane as anyone's who is working from home. They're probably just butthurt that they don't have that luxury.

Anyway, it sucks, especially if the company went back on its word.

 

[timothet]

The goal of an employee should be to get the maximum amount of money (pay) while doing the minimum amount of work he/she can get away with, while the goal of management is to extract the maximum amount of work from its employees while paying them as little as possible.
I get the feeling that some people ITT have some sort of "loyalty" issue whenever someone wants get one over his/her company, which is weird. Employees should never be loyal to a company, we're not in the middle-ages, where being loyal to your craftsmanship guild actually had some merit.
If you like your work so much that you willingly and gleefully do overtime, then cool. Good for you. You're the exception. Not the norm. Don't generalize this to everyone.

People who are "unproductive" at home are also "unproductive" in an office, they just hide it better there. People who are "productive" will also be "productive" at home, maybe a bit less so than in an office (lower single-digit percent, if studies are to be believed) but will have an arguably better work-life balance. The hybrid model of spending most of the week at home and then come to the office for like two days a week or so is the way forward, I think. Some shit like meetings are better held physically, imho. Especially when these are more like technical brainstorm meetings or lectures or something. That's at least my experience.

People who scream the loudest about WFH "not being real work" are weird. Doesn't matter if you bullshit at home or bullshit in an office (bullshitting is actually much easier to accomplish in an office environment, imho).

Couldn't said it better about the whole loyality thing. It's corporate brainwashing at its best.

It's also wery weird to me that people here are defending work from office with productivity stats. It's been decades since workers were properly compensated for increase in their productivity:

 

[Hudo]

It's been decades since workers were properly compensated for increase in their productivity:

Yes. And that should be the actual thing that needs to be discussed.

 

[Kenpachii]

heard a bunch of people here bought a house far away from work for cheap in the covid area because they thought working from distance will become a thing. But realized soon after everybody needed to get back into the office again. Which complete pissed them off at the time.

In my view software company's should have 90% of there work force working at home. Far better for everybody.

 

[Clear]

Working remotely on something as collaborative as making a game is a minefield of potential issues.

The plain fact is that if the "plan" is solid and consistent with everyone on staff confident in the creative vision and deliverables then things can run smoothly, but as soon as the project enters a state of flux and uncertainty, the additional communication time/coordination effort required to right the ship really starts to bite.

 

[Alx]

<1ms delay on a video call doesn’t give you that?

Honestly, no. Or it could seem that it's similar to being in the same room, but you're losing a lot in the process, especially for the person who is responsible of animating the meeting. In a remote meeting there is less body language, a non-natural conversation flow, it is easy to have half the group focus on something else (some would even brag about it, "hey I can follow two meetings at the same time !"). I personally miss interactive tools like white boards or doodles on a piece of paper, that can help a lot to clarify an idea (sure there are digital versions of those, but they definitely don't work as well as the real thing). Not that those issues can't exist in a physical meeting, but they're easier to detect and to fix. Also even assuming that you managed to have efficient remote meetings, you're still missing all the informal interactions between meetings that can ease up the whole process, or help identify unexpected issues.
Working from home is a nice option mind you, it has many benefits for personal life, and even professionally it can help a lot when you need to focus on a task without being disturbed. But for collaboration it is not optimal.

 

[Tsaki]

I guess Bungie still does it?

And Insomniac. But the thing is, they are nowhere near as big as Ubisoft. So when Insomniac advertises open positions, they have no urgent NEED of workforce to pump out stuff. They can wait it out until they find the best candidate possible for the role, a person they know that even via WFH, they will deliver results. Ubisoft can't do that. They had lower than expected results and now they need the totality of the workforce to pick up the slack.

 

[Kaleinc]

When I had to pull my development teams back into the office it was based on data pulled from performance monitoring software and burndown rates. Only 22% of the team members were as productive or more productive working from home, mostly team leads picking up slack for their teams. 78% of team members had lower productivity based on their burndown metrics. I noticed the productivity drop off kept getting worse over time instead of leveling off after a 6-month adjustment period for work from home transition, so the company pushed tracking software to their laptops that I could use to see what they were doing on their laptops at any time I needed to. I could see when they were logged in, what applications were running, and I could get screenshots of what's on their monitors if I needed to.

The 78% were all self-reporting via engagement surveys that working from home was making them as-productive or more productive, but in reality they were not working as much or delivering as much. The burndown rates proved it. Then I saw why burndown rates were suffering. Some would log in to their laptops in the morning, open the thing they were supposed to be working on, and do nothing until they closed their laptops at the end of the day. Some would work half the day. Some would only work a few hours in morning or the evening, presumably working around caring for kids st home all day and not being able to work. Some would only log in for morning standup, then would go completely offline and try to cram everything in the day before demos.

Ended up firing 4 people after conversations about their performance and expectations didn't help. All of them were virtually unreachable during the workday or would answer calls from places like the grocery store, the beach, or some bike trail where they didn't have access to their work. All 4 were offended when I showed that I saw they weren't working and that I needed them to be available to their team members between 9 am and 4 pm. Fired one person for watching porn and listening to anime soundtracks via youtube on his company laptop all day. He said he was doing his work on his personal laptop while watching porn on his company laptop because he didn't want his wife to check his laptop and ask why his browser history was cleared. Using personal equipment for company business breaks our SOX compliance rules.

Now I run a hybrid schedule now where people are in the office two days per week for design, collab and demos. The teams decided themselves that If someone misses their burndown targets without a valid reason that their full team will have to work in the office every day for the next sprint. It keeps them engaged and communicating with each other and self-regulating because nobody wants to be the person that makes everyone come in. They keep their performance up to where it was pre-covid when they were in the office full time.

This long ass post was written during ReBurn 's working hours

 

[Shifty1897]

I do feel for the people who were hired on the condition of fully remote employment. I was hired specifically to be 100% remote and if my employer suddenly changed their mind and told me I needed to suddenly pack up and move 1000 miles to DC to be in office, I'd be furious too.

 

[yurinka]

Sounds like the typical bullshit article from Kotaku or Bloomberg full of lies, fake concerns and most coming from a fired pink haired junior tester who has no idea of what most of the office thinks.

I mean, to hear 'lack of sufficient equipment or accommodations' makes me laugh. Ubisoft Montreal is a top tier studio, if something these studios have an excessive and unneeded amount of stupid luxurious accomodations.

I do feel for the people who were hired on the condition of fully remote employment. I was hired specifically to be 100% remote and if my employer suddenly changed their mind and told me I needed to suddenly pack up and move 1000 miles to DC to be in office, I'd be furious too.

If someone was hired on the condition of full remote employment they can't force him/her to move to the office.

 

[Gamerguy84]

People can't sit home and sneak drinks anymore and now they have to do it at the office.

 

[simpatico]

There's so much cringe in this thread

REMOTE WORK IS ACTUAL WORK.

REMOTE WORK IS REAL WORK.

Listen, if some of y'all like going to the office and working with folks there's nothing wrong with that. You have my support. But I don't understand why y'all act like EVERYONE should have the same opinion that you have. There are perks to working from home. This is an undeniable fact. Companies didn't go out of business during the pandemic when people worked from home. In fact, many companies saw an increase in productivity. My company is one of them (one of the largest companies in north america). In fact, we sold our local office to save the money on the building lease and we're STILL productive.

"Oh, but company culture..."
"If I have to do it then everyone should have to do it..."
"You're not even working if you don't go into an office..."

Some of you need to learn to accept change and open your mind to more possibilities that just what you've been doing all your lives. You can WFH, get your work done, and then you can have friends/acquaintances/a life OUTSIDE OF WORK.

Also, I completely agree with everyone saying how awful open floorplan offices are. Why? Because I've done that too. It sucks.
I feel like half the people in this thread are managers trying to justify their real estate purchases by trying to make it look glamourous and belittle WFH.

I can only speak from my own experience. When my company did it, the work suffered greatly from those who did WFH long term. Office was optional and I preferred not to turn my home into a work space. People who always turned in good product just continually had dumb mistakes throughout when working from the kitchen table to PJs. Emails took longer to get answered, chats went unnoticed. Sure there are probably people who can compartmentalize and get it done, I just haven't seen in at scale.

 

[X-Wing]

I mean if you want people to work in the office you have to create an environment that allows that. I am a software developer and I'm much more productive when working from home than at the office.

 

[fart town usa]

Zombi 2 or Zombi VR is the motivation they need.