Viktor
00:00:00.192
If everybody else is remote, then you would be in an office under the same conditions as if you're remote. But even if it's mixed, right? Some people are in the office, some people are not. You would be missing a lot by not having that connection because learning from others is so much easier and faster when you are directly connected with people face to face. This is DevOps paradox episode number 304 strategies for successful talent retention.
Darin
00:01:30.290
2025, the year of return to the office, or as Victor said earlier this year, the year of not yet, which is it? Is it the year of not yet? Or is it returned to the office?
Viktor
00:01:53.639
I can do call, okay. I have some colleagues that work in an office, just not with other colleagues from the same company. One of my ex colleagues actually, he, one of the main reasons he's going to an office every single day. And not an office of his company, just co located places. He says, I need that human touch, human connection. I would go crazy sitting in my room. That's perfectly valid.
Darin
00:02:21.198
There are some days that I really feel like that, but I don't want to go to a coffee shop. I have too many monitors. I would take up like five or five of the tables.
Viktor
00:02:32.885
There's that, right? There are quite a few things that I feel that I would be missing when going to the office. And one of those things is my setup, right? Like what I have here with two gigantic monitors. You cannot see it on the camera, but they're gigantic, right? I need basically Let's say that 45 degrees view on each side to see what's going on. I'm playing tennis, ping pong, like this. I couldn't have that in an office, right? There's a bunch of other things that I use and they're simply always here. I would have to have quite a large setup in an office. And probably to carry, to go to the office every day with a suitcase. And not the one carry on that you put above you in a plane, but the one that you need to check in.
Darin
00:03:23.416
Today, we're talking about best practices for talent retention. Return to office. Is that a great talent retention item? I think not.
Viktor
00:03:32.707
Depends who you are. So let's say you're Apple, right? And you make a decision to return to the office or not to return to the office. Same thing for Amazon, Google, and a few others. But your decision does not have to take into the account, at least not to a great degree, how people feel about that decision. Right? Because you are the place where everybody wants to work. And if 5 percent of people leave, there is 55 percent that are waiting to come in. But those are exceptions, right?
Darin
00:04:10.160
Well, if you are at the place where people want to work and they realize that, Hey, If I'm going to work here, I have to go to an office, then that's the trade off the person has to make.
Viktor
00:04:21.598
Yeah. And also, there is, to be honest, advantage of an office. I would not necessarily mind having office of a company where I work at, here where I live. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What I'm not necessarily feeling is to relocate where the office is. So, I would be very open if the company where I work at would decide to relocate everybody in a company. To my city and still make it flexible so that we can, but don't have to go to an office. I think that that would be ideal. I just don't see that happening. I'm not sure that everybody else in my company is willing to relocate because of me.
Viktor
00:05:24.008
They should, they absolutely, if you're listening, CEO of my company, if you're listening to this, I think that's a great idea. Everybody should move to Barcelona. that still does not mean that we should be forced to go to the office. I just, I would like to have an opportunity to do so.
Darin
00:05:45.309
We're joking, not joking. return to office is a very touchy subject for a lot of people. I don't know that I could today, where I'm at physically today, that I would want to go to an office every day, five days a week. I, in the town that I would live in and where I'd have to drive. What would normally be a maybe 30 minute drive and no traffic automatically around here becomes an hour, an hour and a half, just because of traffic.
Viktor
00:06:13.242
In my case, it's a no go. It's not happening. I would need to starve. I would accept half a salary. Not to go to an office. Without it, I would not even need to think about it, to be honest. But let me give you this scenario. You just finished university. Should you go to, let's say that you have, you can choose any company you want, right? Any, any work environment, any option. would it be better if you go to an office or work from home? Mm
Darin
00:06:50.340
Okay. I'm going to put a couple of caveats around that. I'm completely single, not tied down to anyone or animals or anything else. Maybe a goldfish
Viktor
00:06:59.690
Yeah. You, you just finished university. I mean, of course you're single. Most people are single these days when they finish university.
Viktor
00:07:09.015
Yeah. And if you're not single, you will be single before you make a decision. That's how modern world works today. So it's fine.
Darin
00:07:25.530
it would be absolutely better for me to work in the office. Hands down. No question.
Darin
00:07:30.690
Assuming this is a secondary thing that everybody else in the company was also working in the office, because if the rest of the company that I'm working with on a daily basis is all remote, I don't know. Then I wouldn't say go to the office.
Viktor
00:07:47.405
If everybody else is remote, then you would be in an office under the same conditions as if you're remote. But even if it's mixed, right? Some people are in the office, some people are not. You would be missing a lot by not having that connection because learning from others is so much easier and faster when you are directly connected with people face to face.
Darin
00:08:15.524
we're not going to spend much more time on return to office, but it's basically, you've got to put on your big boy or big girl pants and make a decision. Because if a company is making millions, billions, trillions of dollars, and they say everybody's coming back to the office, No matter how much you cry, it's not gonna make a difference.
Darin
00:08:35.942
You can say no, right? As I'm saying, you put on your pants and say, okay, this is,
Viktor
00:08:39.327
exactly. Don't yell about it, don't scream. That's a, perfectly valid decision from a company. Companies should be able to decide whether workers should be in an office or no. I have zero grievance against that. And it's for you to say yes or no. Just as a company can say, our headquarters are in Seattle. And if you don't live in Seattle, well, you need to come here because that's where we work. That's perfectly valid.
Darin
00:09:08.790
just like you've drawn a line in the sand, you have to respect that the company has drawn a line in the sand.
Darin
00:09:15.570
And if you don't see that together, maybe it's time to go back to kindergarten and figure out how to play nicely with others.
Viktor
00:09:23.898
Yeah. And again, most of the remote companies are still hiring. So if that does not make you happy going to the office, you just need to look elsewhere.
Darin
00:09:35.863
So I was actually going to bring it up at the end, but we did it at the beginning. Maybe that's actually better because now it's, I'm a lot more calm. We can think about the things that really do matter. Talent retention, paying competitive rates, right? That's a big deal.
Viktor
00:09:48.046
Yes. but there are. Two different things going on there, right? One is competitive rates for the city, state, country, where you are, You need to be competitive. It's not only money, but it is money. But then you have a problem with remote work. So, let's say that you are a company that is fully remote. Humor me in this one, right? What is a competitive rate? Is it for each person different depending on where they live? And if it is, does it make sense from a company perspective if you have equally qualified person in Italy? To pay that person, as in San Francisco, or let me actually keep it within US, if equally good person lives in Alabama, wouldn't you pick that person for less money?
Viktor
00:10:57.129
Yeah, exactly. Um, as an example, right. that might mean that there is some kind of equalizer happening right now, If companies are fully remote. They might be paying over the standard rate in certain places and below standard rate in other places. And that makes the answer to your question, competitive rate, even more complicated, Because what is competitive? Is it the rate for Software Engineer 2, or is it the rate for Software Engineer 2 in Alabama, and Software Engineer 2 in San Francisco, and Software Engineer 2 in Italy?
Darin
00:11:43.967
this is so hard. I'm glad I'm not in HR. That's all I can say. Cause I have seen some companies that try to come up with a median, like they don't look at San Francisco and they don't look in Alabama. They look in a mid tier market and then base their prices roughly on that. And that's not bad, but then again, you're overpaying for Alabama and underpaying for San Francisco.
Viktor
00:12:11.992
Exactly. And potentially losing people from San Francisco, even though sometimes you don't want to lose them. It's complicated.
Darin
00:12:23.102
It's very complicated, but we both agree that paying a competitive rate, whatever that truly means. How it's been defined by the company does matter. In other words, if they are working primarily in an AI market today, right? Let's just, let's, let's make it even worse. They are AI company, like a legit AI company. And they want to start paying people 40, 000 a year with after five years, you'll be able to get to 60, 000. That's not going to fly.
Viktor
00:12:53.584
No. Because Then we're entering into discussion about market forces, right? How can you pay half of what your competition is paying and expect that somebody is going to join your company, And that means that the closer the company is to the edge, to the hype, to whatever is happening right now, the more prepared that company needs to be to Pay big bucks for talent. So if you're just, let's say you are, I'm not sure how to come up with an example. It doesn't sound horrible. Oh, all I need is people to know how to run things in Docker containers, right? You don't need to pay much because there is a tremendous offer. Hundreds of thousands, millions of people know how to do that. But if you're company who runs in Kubernetes, then you automatically need to. increase the salary because the pool of people is already smaller. Then you say, Oh no, but you know, also AI or Wasm, or, you know, the more you narrow, the closer you get to the current trends that are by definition, not really full of people who know it, your competitive rates go up. Demand an offer.
Darin
00:14:22.608
It's sort of like insurance pools. If you don't understand the concept, let's say you're, because I've been through this recently. let's say you've got 10 people in a pool of people, right? There's only 10 people there. And I'm trying to get insurance in that pool. If I get into a pool that has a thousand people, my rates are going to be lower. Because I'm not in a pool of just 10 people, right? That's because they're segregated out for whatever reason. And flip that back over to where you're trying to get paid. Right. Instead of me paying out, how am I getting paid? If I've got, if I'm in a pool of people and I'm one of five people in the whole world that can do this one thing, I'm going to expect a bigger pay, period.
Darin
00:15:07.513
But if I'm one of 50, 000, it's like, nah, it's probably going to be very negotiable.
Viktor
00:15:13.224
Exactly. Okay. That drastically affected the story about the talent, right? Because, you know, a talent for, let's say, a company like Capgemini, nothing against Capgemini, just to be clear, or maybe, I don't know, I don't know, but I'm just guessing, the competitive rate over there is not the same as the competitive rate in, let's say, OpenAI. I'm pretty sure that on average people are going to, let's say that both are equally concerned about retaining talent, right? But the pool is very different.
Darin
00:15:47.227
yeah, because Capgemini, they're global to an extent, I guess OpenAI is global too. But let's spin it the other direction. Let's say I'm running a boutique consulting firm in the middle of Nebraska. Yeah, I am the one guy that's maintaining Log4j in Nebraska.
Darin
00:16:06.517
And I've, and I'm running the boutique and I only want people that live in my town within five miles of the office. That way they don't have a long commute. And that way they can come in all the time. So I can put them under my thumb. You're also not going to be able to find people, probably, unless you're going to pay them a lot of money because the pool there is going to be much smaller. When the pool is the whole planet, you have options.
Viktor
00:16:31.002
Actually, you do have options in Nebraska. You just need to pay sufficient amount of money for somebody that you really want to relocate there. Right?
Darin
00:16:45.022
Yeah, I would agree with that. So pay, important. Return to office. Now let's stick in, I'm going to go, even though I said, we weren't going to talk about it much more, let's talk about it. Let's say that you are working for a company that Mandates in office time. And you're okay with that, right? Some people just want to get out of the house. We talked about that. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. If you're in an office today, 2025, what kind of perks, I'm using that word specifically, are you expecting in an office today? Are you still expecting the free beer and the foosball tables
Viktor
00:17:24.404
Free meals. Transport to the office, gym, massage, pool, helicopter pad, I don't know.
Darin
00:17:40.481
My point to this is can the employees get away with pushing for what I'm going to call the stupidity of the early two thousands of everything that was in startup offices,
Viktor
00:17:54.007
Not necessarily employees, more of, more potential employees than employees. Because you're there. And, the best way to negotiate is to say, I'm leaving, Those things are more designed for people coming to work for you than those already working. Like, you're interviewing with both Google and Netflix and Apple, and you're inviting to their offices and one impresses you more than the other. You choose that one.
Darin
00:18:32.610
that seems reasonable. It seems like one seriously though, based on some of the return offices I've seen in the past few months is there's not enough space for the people. There's no parking. There's no desks because now everybody's come back in and they'd already sized down the environments. And now there's nowhere to put people. That's a problem. We have to put that on the company, I think, because if they said, okay, we're gonna have a thousand people in here every day and 500. That doesn't make sense.
Viktor
00:19:07.430
one of the big problems with tech is that it is very localized, it is very centralized. Of course, there are tech jobs everywhere, but those that you really, really, really, really want, at least until recent or in the past, are in San Francisco, London, Tel Aviv, five more places, right? So the real question there is, are you willing to move? Because majority of people who work in San Francisco Tech are not born there, And of course, you're going to move if you're young, and then you stay there, and life is great, and all that stuff. But now that we had COVID, many of us returned to wherever we were. Oh, I was living here, but actually I was never living there because that's where I want to live. I was living there because that's where my work is and now we're all remote, COVID what's or not, and I'm going to back to where I was, or where I want to be, wherever that is. And for some people that's San Francisco, cool. So actually, really, we are now talking about relocation. When we hear, uh, return to office, and that's a real problem. I don't think that people would be so disappointed if they returned to the office, if they stayed where they were, or even better, if they, if they are relatively close to an office. The problem, like you, Darin, you live wherever you live, right? What are the chances if some company, wherever you work would say, okay, now return to the office, you need to go to New York, or wherever that is, Seattle, doesn't matter, right? It's very likely that you would say no, unless you have no other options. Because you're there, your wife is there, your house is there, your dog is there. How the heck do you move? And you're not a kid anymore. Remember your initial comments about when I said you just graduated and you started asking questions like, are you single or not, and so on and so forth? You're an old geezer now. You're not single. You have a house So on and so forth. You're not moving anywhere, unless you have no other option. I mean, I'm speaking in your name, I don't know, I can say for myself, I'm not moving anywhere. I am exactly where I want to be. So you need to open an office to begin with where I am.
Viktor
00:21:47.738
Yeah, unless I have no other options. Just to be clear, some people don't have many options. Sometimes it's hard. You need to swallow that pill and you go for it, right? And also it's a question of financial motivation. Like, if I tell you, Darin, and I'm playing a game now, it's not real, 25 percent more of what you're earning if you move, you might still say no. But if I offer double, maybe,
Viktor
00:22:19.050
exactly. But then I'm overpaying, I'm definitely overpaying. The benefits of you having been in an office is not double.
Darin
00:22:30.574
You would think so. Actually, no, I would make it valuable to you as the owner. Cause I'll live in the office 16 hours a day, seven days a week. So, you know, oh wait, that makes me paid less. okay. So we talked about the foosball table and stuff. Training used to be a big thing back in the nineties. Like that was one of the big things that got me to move initially to Texas. It was a company who had a really decent training budget. So I can go to a couple of classes a year. They pay for my exams. It was, it was pretty cool. Is training still worth it today?
Viktor
00:23:11.609
I mean, I would even go as far as to say in some future, without me saying whether that's a year from now or a hundred years from now, I'm not sure whether kids will be studying in the same building in university. And training, like, temporary thing. I'm not moving to, to Austin for a week of training and with the premise to stay there forever. That's not happening anymore. Back in the day, that was a thing. Hey, I want it to be where people are, because of trainings and connections, stuff like that. I have it online now, there is something called Zoom,
Darin
00:23:55.498
Yeah, I don't think training is what it used to be. I mean, I'm sure there are certain careers that it does make sense for that. But in the tech space, boy, I don't think That's as big of a draw as it used to be.
Viktor
00:24:09.636
Training changed drastically for a single reason. I mean, probably there are more than one reasons, but one is very important. And that's that when we were young, maybe that was not true, but I'm pretty sure that that was the feeling, at least the feeling I had. When I did some training or certification. That was for life. I'm training to be good at doing this in my company, right? And I will be doing that until I retire. I might be exaggerating a bit, but that's not far from the truth, You become trained Cisco networking something something, and you're doing Cisco networking, and life is good. What is the lifespan of a training now? Years? I mean, it's not. double digit.
Darin
00:25:06.165
I, it's, it's going to be single digit and I think it's going to be low single digit.
Viktor
00:25:10.690
There we go. Exactly. And you can see that by trainings, is that, again, going back to Cisco networking, this or that, right? That's a training you do, and then you do the job. Now if you go to, like, CNCF training Kubernetes, whatever the name is, right? Every year you need to redo it. And that's without even changing the subject. It's still Kubernetes. I'm not sure actually whether it's every year or every second year, but you need to renew it to maintain it. There are two reasons for that. First, because it's more profitable like that, just to be clear, but also because things are changing.
Darin
00:25:50.602
Changing, loop back around to return to office. If you want to keep your people, your talent, offer some form of flexible work. Maybe you still require the five days a week, but if the kid is sick at home, need to take them to the doctor and I have to fill out. Six forms in triplicate to be able to take off two hours. lost the plot, especially after the pandemic. If most companies were a good number of companies, let's be even more conservative, a good number of companies made money during the pandemic without having people in the office, and now nothing can happen unless it's in the office, did you just have amnesia for the past four or five years?
Viktor
00:26:44.705
It's all about money. that's why you hear a lot about moving back to the office from big tech, you know, apples and Amazons of the world. And they're paying premium. They're paying premium that it's okay if you reallocate your kid to a new school and it's okay if your spouse does not work and so on and so forth. Because we're talking about. Mid six digits, But that's unrealistic.
Darin
00:27:12.924
What do you think the right level of, of that flexibility is today? I mean, we went from being completely in office, let's ignore remote work for a little bit. We were all in office. Then we went all fully remote. We did this hybrid and now we were sliding back to all in office. Does it matter the role? I mean, sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Viktor
00:27:37.942
It matters a lot what you're doing and who you are. And I feel that companies are making mistakes by making, you know, 100 percent decisions. Everybody in the office, nobody in the office, all those things. That's a mistake. It's not that one is better or worse than the other, it depends what you're doing. Like we touched on one of those cases, if you're young, go to the office, I will not allow you to work remotely if you're young, you need to learn and you need the fastest way to learn is from your colleagues. If there is some kind of role or group or a team that is really innovating, brainstorming, let's say some kind of brainstorming position or a team, say you have a team that is brainstorming most of the time. Brainstorming is so much easier when we are all in the same room, all drinking Red Bull, not sleeping overnight. And so on and so forth, right? That's how you brainstorm. that's why companies do offsites. Let's gather all together and brainstorm. And sometimes the team is, that's what they're doing, brainstorming. But if your job is to do work, like I'm managing the system, I'm managing the servers, I am writing code and so on and so forth, I can do that remote. here's the trick. I'm willingly going to spend more time doing it than if I would be in an office. Because I can distribute my time. I can do 12 hours instead of 8, but that's distributed, you know. Do 3 hours, have some lunch, take kid back from school, work some more. It amounts to more work. I do more work from home. But that's because it's on my own terms. And I don't see how I would be more productive if I would be in an office. Sufficiently more productive. So if you say 10 percent more productive, not enough, that's enough.
Darin
00:29:50.422
Well, I think you hit the point there, the off sites, even if you're fully remote, fully on the office or fully in the office, having those off sites, you know, breaking up what's happening, breaking up the normal a big difference.
Viktor
00:30:05.912
Oh yeah, do it, do it, uh, every month if you need it, that's fine. It's still not going to be more expensive than having an office.
Darin
00:30:17.012
Well, it might be. It depends on if you're, if you're going to Miami and New York and San Francisco and,
Viktor
00:30:24.570
yeah, when you're fully distributed, like where I am right now, yeah, it's going to be much more expensive in an office, but are you sure about that? Cause you need to relocate everybody across the globe to an office, You need to adjust salaries. I'm paying, being paid less than if you move me to San Francisco, I can tell you that 100%. So if you take all that into account, I'm not sure whether it's more expensive to do off sites, I'm pretty sure it's not. Now, if everybody's work is living in the same city like Seattle, then yes. But then off sites are going to be cheap as well. You go to a local bar and you have an off site.
Darin
00:31:04.232
I think we'll have to agree to somewhat disagree. I'm not fully disagreeing, but we'll see where that goes. But what do you think? I have a feeling this episode is going to tweak a lot of people, sometimes positive, but probably primarily negative. That both Viktor and I are okay with return to office, believe it or not.
Darin
00:31:29.681
Head over to the Slack workspace, look for episode number 304 and leave your comments there. We hope this episode was helpful to you. If you want to discuss it or ask a question, please reach out to us. Our contact information and a link to the Slack workspace are at devopsparadox. com contact. If you subscribe through Apple podcast, be sure to leave us a review there. That helps other people discover this podcast. Go sign up right now at devopsparadox. com to receive an email whenever we drop the latest episode. Thank you for listening to DevOps Paradox.