[HN Gopher] Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at ...
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Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work
Author : chunkyslink
Score : 96 points
Date : 2021-06-03 05:44 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| Popcicley wrote:
| _How do they use rituals and symbols to forge a common
| worldview?_
|
| I'm real tired of this larger thought that a job is anything but
| a place where I'm paid to do a task. I'm not there for friends -
| i already have ample, chosen through decades of careful selection
| - nor am I there for rituals or world views. I already have
| those.
|
| Sometimes I feel like lonely/empty people find these things in
| their job and force it onto the rest of us while singing praises
| of team building or corp culture/community into their inner void.
| babesh wrote:
| What the article is saying is that there are group benefits to
| working together and that they speculate that the traders in
| America did better than the traders in Europe because they worked
| together.
|
| Most comments I read on Hacker News that say that working from
| home is better measure a single individual's output or that of a
| group that has worked together for a period of time.
|
| There may well be studies that show that WFH is better. It would
| be good to study this further.
|
| Perhaps it is better in some ways and worse in others. Perhaps it
| is better for some groups and worse for others. Perhaps certain
| technologies or processes can shift the balance.
|
| I would hope that this is what we seek to learn. Instead, on
| Hacker News, you find a lot of agenda pushing. That makes me sad.
| I hope that we become more curious and open minded.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I would be interested in knowing how much a WFH preference
| correlates with how much engineering teams work together.
|
| As I have never worked for an engineering team that did
| anything other than parcel out work and expect people to go and
| do it. Yes, there was some pair programming for tough parts and
| we do architecture together, but as a general rule I don't
| meaningfully talk to any other engineers for completing my
| features except maybe to ask 10-20 minutes of questions.
|
| So the "working together" part to me mostly consists of me
| being in a meeting which is not all that technical and where I
| don't care what the decision is. I have far more hours sitting
| in meetings playing on my phone than I have genuinely engaged
| in collaborative development.
|
| But on the other end you have companies like Pivotal which are
| 100% paired code writing.
| orwin wrote:
| I'd say that if you're an ops/devops/architect, you need to
| work between 20% and 60% of your time with someone else. If
| you're a dev, i think roughly 20% is quite enough (unless you
| only do peer programming).
| mtberatwork wrote:
| > Most comments I read on Hacker News that say that working
| from home is better measure a single individual's output or
| that of a group that has worked together for a period of time.
|
| Well, of course people are going to advocate for what works
| best for them. The workforce has drastically changed and
| careers are much more in the hands of individuals now. Upper
| management/HR layers aren't advocating for employees anymore,
| career paths through a single company is almost a relic. So
| it's only natural that individuals are wanting whats best for
| individuals.
| [deleted]
| SilverRed wrote:
| It almost feels like there is a conspiracy brewing to talk down
| on WFH despite most employees loving it. I suspect that the
| commercial property owners and middle managers are behind this
| because they are the ones who have mostly lost out here.
|
| The cat is out of the bag I think. Once people can work from home
| in a post covid world where they can socialize normally, I think
| many companies, and especially in software development will
| become very remote friendly.
| alliao wrote:
| the owners are mostly banks. And they aren't happy about the
| haircut for sure. but no matter, at the current rate of money
| printing everything's tolerable. Not happy, but tolerable hence
| these little random jabs gauging public opinion.
| null_object wrote:
| > It almost feels like there is a conspiracy brewing to talk
| down on WFH despite most employees loving it
|
| There are enormous economic forces whose interest lies in
| workers returning to offices and city-centers.
|
| Thinking that journalists and media-sources are immune to this
| pressure is illusory - they will be talking to 'experts' who
| are effectively lobbyists, getting press-releases and generally
| being contacted in their networks by a lot of people who want
| to push this agenda, so that expensive offices are filled and
| city-center businesses can begin to sluice our cash again.
|
| I have saved enormous amounts of money by WFH over the last
| year, enjoy it more than sitting at an office desk all day, had
| more family-time, private and hobby time, have eaten more
| healthily and gotten more exercise and (probably most
| importantly of all), worked with better focus and more
| effectively.
|
| But I have no doubt that I'll be required to work at the office
| again at the end of the summer, because the combination of
| these immovable economic forces, together with the ingrained
| cultural prejudices of the management class (that prefer the
| buzz of the office environment), make it an inevitability.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Yeah, the other thread, the guy most upvoted, talks about how
| amazing office is,while when asked: 86 percent reply they don't
| want to go back.
|
| Upvote bots are active now on hackernews, its sad, but bound to
| happen.
| 1_player wrote:
| It's not upvote bots, it's called a "vocal minority". It
| sounds really loud, because the majority don't have to shout
| to be heard.
| [deleted]
| lordnacho wrote:
| I think commercial property in the old form is screwed. Nearly
| every office job type firm is now offering reduced time in the
| office, with a few standouts still holding on to full time on
| site. That's my personal survey anyway, having talked to quite
| a number of them over the last few weeks. You can tell on some
| hiring managers that they'd really rather have people in the
| office, but they can see where the market is going.
|
| The number of fully remote firms has gone up, but what's also
| interesting is that many old firms are allowing half remote. So
| two or three days in the office, the rest at home. A lot of
| these types of firms will change the space they need. More fun
| space, meeting rooms, because that's what you'll be doing on
| the days in, and less traditional floor.
|
| The other big losers from this are the food and coffee shops in
| town centre. I went in to chat with some, and it's a bloodbath.
| soco wrote:
| I somehow believe the old firms will simply reduce their
| rented space, and let you have fun at home. I really feel bad
| for the coffee shops, it's just a mandatory office presence
| cannot be based on the interests of some other company :(
| _feels guilty_
| jolux wrote:
| It's funny because I feel like I've been reading article after
| article recently about how working in offices is dumb and they
| can't imagine why anyone would do it anymore unless they were
| zombified corporate stooges. My feeling is that working in an
| office makes it _possible_ for me to separate work from the
| rest of my life, and my commute (about 30 minutes, soon to be
| fifteen or less via public transit once I move) nicely bookends
| it, separating it off from the rest of my day. I have been
| dying to go back to the office since April 2020.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I saw a comment in the Apple thread where someone said people
| who don't like WFH hate their family, or themselves. Which
| was a shocking comment.
|
| I love spending time with my family and daughter, but I get
| paid to work to support my family, and working from home
| makes me feel distracted.
|
| I thought working from home would be the best part of a job,
| but losing the separation of work/life, going from avoiding
| meetings to looking forward to them for social interaction
| with my co-workers, missing the lunch time outings with co-
| workers, the chit-chat, asking for help or being asked for
| help.
|
| I've come to really miss working in the office. I was WAY
| more productive, kept better hours, and coming home from work
| to family was great.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's the first / second / third place theorem; first place
| is your home and family life, second place is the
| workplace, and third life is leisure and social activities
| like the pub.
|
| It's a really mixed bag for me. I finally left my previous
| job, even though I could finally work at HQ (instead of
| being sent out to customers) after a few years, and it was
| a very cushy HQ office with really fun colleagues and all
| that. On the other hand, they didn't have the work that
| gave me the gratification I wanted from a job.
|
| I got a different job where the work is pretty much
| perfect, but the office is bad (basic linoleum rent-an-
| office with bad chairs and ventilation, although I do have
| my own office). I've been working from home since march
| last year and I never really feel like I want to go to the
| office. I might again now that the temperatures are going
| up, they have AC.
|
| Yeah there's more distractions from the family, but at the
| same time it means I can do a lot more to look after them -
| my girlfriend had an appointment yesterday but also a
| migraine, I was there to take her to it instead of her
| having to suffer driving or canceling it, for example.
| anthropodie wrote:
| I guess finally it comes down to individual choice.
|
| Let people choose where they want to work from!
| flukus wrote:
| Problem is, many of the reasons people prefer in-office
| require the rest of us to be in the office. Some are
| manageable, if you like the social aspect there will be
| others like that and they can be social together. Others
| like "better collaboration" really require a decent chunk
| of your immediate team to be there.
| anthropodie wrote:
| I mentioned this in other comment thread.
|
| If people who want to work from office find themselves in
| empty office then they need to adapt to this new paradigm
| shift the same way rest of us adapted to loud open
| offices where anyone can walk up to anyone and interrupt
| the flow.
|
| Some people adapt to whatever reality is while others
| force their responsibility of adaptation on their
| peers/environment.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| It depends on company culture. Some places are "remote
| friendly" and some places are remote friendly.
| [deleted]
| thanatos519 wrote:
| ^ This. Going to the office _was_ my social life, because I
| 'm an expat and the office was full of other geeky expats.
| I even went to the office when the rest of my team was in
| another timezone, but I had lost all opportunities for pair
| programming. When 100% WFH hit, I was talking about maybe 2
| days a week in the office being the right balance, but now
| I'm thinking I could WFH effectively a maximum of 1 day a
| week.
| flukus wrote:
| > My feeling is that working in an office makes it possible
| for me to separate work from the rest of my life
|
| This is seems to be pretty common, can you explain why it's
| so hard to separate?
|
| Generally I start the work day by turning on the work
| computer, when I'm done I turn it off and anything beyond
| that is the sort of rare exception I would have logged in
| from home for even if I was working in the office. That and a
| couple of other little rituals like switching coffee mugs and
| wearing pants gives me all the separation I need.
| tehbeard wrote:
| Most of us don't have a separate room for an office, or
| might be stuck using our own equipment (pc, phone) for our
| job now, which blurs the lines on home/work.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > which blurs the lines on home/work.
|
| I set up a `work` account on my laptop which helps to
| give a distinction because it keeps all of "my" stuff
| away (although I will confess to logging into HN as me
| from the `work` account...)
|
| Lacking a distinct room is tricky but I got a little
| folding desk that's designated as "work" - when it's up,
| it's work time. Otherwise it goes down the side of the
| couch/chair.
|
| Not the same as commuting to an office but little things
| that give a slightly brighter edge between home/work.
| jolux wrote:
| Yeah, I have to work in the same room that I sleep in,
| and I only have one monitor and one desk.
| anthropodie wrote:
| I understand.
|
| But if you could choose permanent work from home would
| you really work from the same room? In my case, I would
| ditch my apartment go back to my hometown build a home
| with a dedicated office.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Moved back to my hometown with above median wage. Still
| can't afford 3 rooms... So no office for me. Just not
| realistic in some parts of world. Unless I'm willing to
| move far away from the town itself(everything is
| relative, European distances for towns are short).
| jolux wrote:
| I wouldn't choose it because I don't like it. I'm not
| going to change a housing situation I like a lot just to
| make it easier to work from where I live. That's the
| opposite of work-life balance, to me.
| lnenad wrote:
| I'm in the same boat, 15 mins to work. I like the separation
| aspect, and the social aspect as well. Can't wait to go back.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Indeed I know we shouldn't instigate conspiracy shilling
| without evidence.
|
| However it does feel that there is an agenda from the Savills
| of the world to justify office leases with a lot of these
| fragile reasoning articles coming out.
|
| Of course remote meetings will not have the same 'feeling' as a
| live meeting the question is do you have the right tooling and
| processes to achieve the same outcome.
|
| That is something companies need to adapt to, rather than force
| everyone back to the office.
| anthropodie wrote:
| > The right tooling and process to achieve the same outcome
|
| Not to mention this is true even when working from office.
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| I don't think it's a conspiracy necessarily, there are people
| with vested interests in returning to "normal" working
| conditions and yes they will encourage the view that the
| economy/society will collapse if we don't all go back full
| time.
|
| Even when it was plain that a second/third wave was going to
| hit the UK the government (and elements of the press) were
| insisting that we should all go back to the office for the good
| of the economy [0]. Two months later a new lockdown was
| announced to prevent a "medical and moral disaster".
|
| 0 - https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/evening-
| standard-...
| codingdave wrote:
| I feel like it is just the concept of the vocal minority.
| People who are seeing the world go their way tend to just enjoy
| the ride. People who don't like how it is going tend to be
| quite vocal about their displeasure. Minority opinions can be
| quite loud, in any aspect of our society.
|
| Personally, I want to respect our differences. I support people
| figuring out where they want to work and finding companies who
| let them do so. We don't all have the same desires, and we
| should not expect everyone to want the same thing. I do believe
| that companies will have to support the desires of their
| workers more than they have in the past, and hopefully that
| will be well balanced with what people really want.
| anthropodie wrote:
| Let people choose where they want to work from!
|
| Now if people who want to work from office find themselves in
| empty office then they need to adapt to this new paradigm
| shift the same way rest of us adapted to loud open offices
| where anyone can walk up to anyone and interrupt the flow.
|
| Some people adapt to whatever reality is while others force
| their responsibility of adaptation on their
| peers/environment.
| soco wrote:
| This is already an extreme view: why should the office be
| empty? Unless the company is 2 people, there's a good
| chance the socialite is not alone, and most people aren't
| 100% committed in either direction anyway. The solution
| could be actually trivial: poll the employees preferences,
| rent a smaller office space, use an online scheduler for
| office time, there we go.
| swiley wrote:
| WFH is an instant 13-20% raise for most people because
| they're not compensated for the commute. The same economic
| effect that results in SWEs being paid well above minimum
| wage will also result in widespread remote work.
|
| If you like socializing you can still do that, in fact you
| can do more of it since you're not spending an hour or two
| every day in a car, alone.
| darkwater wrote:
| I don't know where you live but you should also keep in
| mind that in many places of the world commuting is done
| within a metropolitan area, and usually with public
| transportation (trains, buses, subways etc) so while it
| still takes away time it's not that catastrophic on the
| environmental side. And there are people who likes to
| physically separate their personal life from their work
| life. And I'm a pre-pandemic remote worker who used to work
| in the office, and I can see the good and the bad sides of
| both positions. I don't really understand why WFH
| enthusiasts are usually so radical on this topic.
| swiley wrote:
| Sure that's the case in most of the world, but in the US
| you're spending an hour and a half alone in a car unless
| you've structured your life around avoiding that.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _I don 't really understand why WFH enthusiasts are
| usually so radical on this topic._
|
| WFH in general, now? Overton window. It's probably our
| one and only opportunity to shift it to include WFH as a
| standard practice in companies. Before, remote
| opportunities were very scarce, and were mostly tied
| around contracting. The pandemic briefly normalized WFH,
| but there's plenty of interests - powerful interests -
| gearing to get back to office work as soon as legally
| allowed. WFH enthusiasts try to counter that pressure, in
| a desperate attempt to make WFH stick.
|
| > _you should also keep in mind that in many places of
| the world commuting is done within a metropolitan area,
| and usually with public transportation (trains, buses,
| subways etc) so while it still takes away time it 's not
| that catastrophic on the environmental side_
|
| Yeah, but even for the most environmentally conscious,
| _personal time_ is still the most scarce commodity.
| Commuting by bus or bicycle is better than by car, but
| _no commute at all_ is better than any of this. Public
| transport lets you make partial use of commute time; lack
| of commute gives you that time back.
|
| And then not having to commute opens up geographical
| flexibility - you can suddenly work for a company in a
| different city, or in a different country. This is a
| well-covered topic, but there's another flip side to it,
| which makes some WFH people "radical": if their company
| pulls the plug on WFH now, it'll severely mess up their
| lives.
|
| Personal example: I've been contracting remotely for a
| foreign company (started pre-pandemic), and due to
| various reasons, that contract got turned into FTE in a
| local company... with offices 400km from where I live.
| One which didn't, until pandemic, practice remote work.
| So I'm keenly tracking any and all discussions about work
| policies, because if they were to return to pre-pandemic
| policies, I'd have to uproot my life or change jobs. And
| I don't want to change my job, I really like the team and
| the work. So you can imagine I'm sensitive about this.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| No, it's not WFH enthusiasts being radical, it's both
| sides. It's just an extremely polarizing topic.
|
| Managers must understand this and simply work it out for
| both sides. It's not hard, really.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > I don't really understand why WFH enthusiasts are
| usually so radical on this topic.
|
| I venture that it's partially down to years of "NO, WFH
| would RUIN the business and CATASTROPHISE us into
| BANKRUPTCY!!!" from businesses when people requested it
| and ... it turned out to be bullshit, everything pretty
| much worked ok when everyone was WFH, and people are not
| minded to let business slip back into their previous
| bullshit without a fight.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I was at one of those places. The owner,board,Upper mgmt
| would have a hissy fit (sometimes literally) when anyone
| requested any sort of work from home condition. Declaring
| (sometimes screaming) that the business would go under
| nothing would get done, ect,ect.. They couldn't manage
| things that way. Even though we would often go months
| without hearing from any of these aforementioned people.
|
| Then the Thanos *snap happened and one day we all had to
| be WFH almost overnight. What changed? Literally nothing
| except better more humane working conditions. Everything
| got done business is still fine.
|
| So are some of us bitter about it? Definitely.
| [deleted]
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| Yes absolutely. Commuting does not automatically cause
| socializing.
|
| Commuting causes back pain, exhaustion, pollution and lots
| of traffic. Oh, and traffic accidents. 100% of my 2 traffic
| accidents were during commuting.
| dougmwne wrote:
| For many, many people the cat is out of the bag. I went through
| this 5 years ago and couldn't stand being back in the office. I
| was the rat that escaped the maze. There was no going back for
| me.
|
| Most people have never in their lives experienced the autonomy
| and self-direction of WFH. They have been running from
| obligation to obligation, expectation to expectation with no
| time to digest or consider if there's a better way. Now, for
| many people they have lived that better way and they will never
| go back.
| ppf wrote:
| A conspiracy? From the independent and free-thinking Guardian?
| If they have been infiltrated by money-grabbing property
| ownwers, then there is no hope!
|
| Seriously though. I think that the Covid enforced WFH has shown
| many people that there are many benefits to at least some form
| of in-person, workplace-based interaction. Not everyone is a
| software developer who can just get on with the work with only
| a laptop.
| onion2k wrote:
| A lot of people say they enjoy working from home, but I suspect
| it's more the case that they enjoy things like not feeling
| watched by managers, or being interrupted as much, or fewer
| meetings, or being able to work with things like a television
| on or music with headphones. Those things _could_ be achieved
| in an office environment with some thought and fewer open-plan
| spaces.
|
| Even people saying they prefer WFH because they no longer have
| to commute could be solved with some (huge) infrastructure
| changes.
|
| What remote working highlights is that there are big problems
| with offices and that the simplest solution is to work
| somewhere else. That doesn't mean working from your home the
| best solution.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| This essay combines a number of guilty pleasures. There's the
| author, Gillian Tett, who is US editor for the _Financial Times_
| , and in an earlier life, a goes-out-on-digs anthropologist. She
| doesn't get to flex her anthro background often but it's a joy
| when she does, the piece comes from an upcoming book. She focuses
| largely on John Seely Brown of Xerox Park, still very much alive
| despite Dr. Tett's past-tense references, and author of _The
| Social Life of Information_ (2000, 2017), a hugely illuminating
| read despite a few glaring holes (like the World Wide Web,
| apparently invisible to a Xerox careerist at the time). It 's one
| of several reads from the dawn of the Web age which have grown on
| me. And the question of how work, information, space, and
| distance combine.
|
| Please do give it a solid read. This isn't just another "remote
| work vs. offices" screed, not even hardly.
|
| One point that many WFH enthusiasts (I am one) tend to miss (I
| prove myself the exeption) is that telecommunications actually
| _amplifies_ the power of locality, in a sort of perverse paradox.
| The logic operates somewhat akin to Amdahl 's law of computer
| parallelisation, in which the degree of parallelisation is
| limited by the unparallelisable portion of processing. For remote
| work, the limiting factor is the obligate localised functions, or
| the functions in which local access is superior to remote.
|
| Tett's essay addresses several of these, most especially the
| difficult-to-capture, difficult-to-engineer incidental
| communications. Water-cooler chats, conversations overheard down
| the corridor, incidental meetings in tea rooms or canteens or
| lavatories, car pools, shared lunches. It's why Steve Jobs
| designed the Pixar studios with a centralised bank of washrooms.
| Being in a space, crossing paths with people, being familiar with
| their faces or voices, _can_ be useful.
|
| (It's also often _not_ so, especially where both dissimilar and
| incompatible activities are placed proximate to one another. But
| the opportunity exists.)
|
| And in a work environment where all the remote-comms tools are
| excellent and as good as possible, _the temas working in
| proximity will still have the advantages afforded by localised
| contact_. They 'll also benefit from activities which _cannot_ be
| provided remotely (though those may also substitute for services
| which might be provided at home or locally to a distributed
| workforce). Still, though, since Adam Smith and before, the power
| of cities and concentrations of activity to support a richer,
| more complex, more nuanced, and more specialised set of
| activities has been recognised. And telecoms simply cannot answer
| all of those needs, especially where physical presence of people,
| equipment, and /or activity are required.
|
| Even if telecoms _could_ do so, _it would have to be conscious
| and aware of the affordances it is being called on to replace,
| and the role and impace those had on earlier practices._
| anthropodie wrote:
| It will take years before we have settled on work from home or
| office. I don't think a mix will exist, either entire team will
| WFH or WFO.
|
| The good thing is the experiment has started. Many companies are
| becoming remote friendly. The long term effects of WFH on
| companies success will determine whether it will be WFH or WFO.
| Whatever it is the rest of companies will have to adapt to new
| paradigm.
| jmfldn wrote:
| I prefer the hybrid option but faced with the binary choice I
| would choose WFH. I'd forego money and even career
| opportunities for it. As long as I can pay the bills and do
| reasonably interesting and useful work it will be hard to lure
| me back. Maybe I'm an outlier but I suspect I'm part of a
| significant demographic at least.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > I would choose WFH. I'd forego money and even career
| opportunities for it.
|
| Same. At least when I'm forced into (occasionally
| multi-)hour-long meetings that have no relevance to me, I can
| wander about doing chores whilst half-listening rather than
| being sat in an airless room wondering how I made such bad
| life choices as to end up there.
| jmfldn wrote:
| Having tasted 1yr WFH I will never work for a company that
| doesn't give me autonomy in this area. My current company is
| letting us choose post-pandemic, and were they ever to backslide
| I'd vote with my feet and move jobs.
|
| I think the key thing here is choice and being able to adopt a
| hybrid approach. The same approach doesn't work for all people,
| teams and companies. Having the power to choose is amazing though
| and us employees should fight tooth and nail to preserve these
| rights. Why should jobs that can be done remotely have a mandate
| attached about where you work on every day of the week? That's
| incredibly oppressive when you think about it.
| halayli wrote:
| There are pros and cons to wfh vs office and each individual will
| weigh them according to what they value more. The pros can be
| cons to the other group and vice versa.
|
| I hope this topic shift in the right direction and focuses on the
| steps employers need to take to let employees decide for
| themselves and ensure equal opportunity regardless of what choice
| they've taken.
| oDot wrote:
| I wrote a booklet[0] about being thrown into remote work, and as
| I gathered, really the only objections are the likes of this
| article, something along the lines of "We had this good thing in
| the office and now we don't have it therefore we need the
| office".
|
| They all fail to use the important lesson Henry Hazlitt thought
| us:
|
| > The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the
| immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it
| consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely
| for one group but for all groups.
|
| Looking at the direct effects of being in or out of the office is
| very naive. They go further than that.
|
| [0]: https://www.emergencyremote.com/emergencyremote
| whateveracct wrote:
| That booklet is nice!
| teddyh wrote:
| That's more of a monograph than a booklet.
| darksaints wrote:
| What a weird objection.
| teddyh wrote:
| It's more of a nitpick than an objection.
| amriksohata wrote:
| I found the vast majority of people prefer complete wfh or a
| hybrid split in favour of wfh, with occasional trips into the
| office.
|
| I only have seen about 10% of staff or less wanting the opposite
| or completely office based work.
|
| Like many have said here, commercial property vendors who have
| had their heydey now are scared of losing their rent. There are
| also businesses who rely on lunchtimes but they can always offer
| delivery. Economics always wins so businesses have to adapt.
| froh wrote:
| wow what a read :-)
|
| it differentiates three key aspects of work: the continuous
| information exchange, the atmosphere of in-person gatherings and
| the value of seeing beyond the personal scope.
|
| in my personal experience in FOSS inspired evironments (like a
| Linux distribution) these can be achieved well with a balanced
| mix of on-site physical collaboration and remote work.
|
| specifically large chat rooms serve as water coolers, or in the
| article coffee exchanges. mailing lists work well for technical
| exchange. VCS in combination with the other two works well for
| disciplined collaboration and preparation of consensus --- or the
| identification of divergent topics.
|
| and those divergent topics are the ones where physical
| collaboration shines, with moderator support where needed. TIL
| about humming and I love it.
|
| in total the first three, group chat water coolers, mailing list
| style thought exchanges, a disciplined review-enabled document
| collaboration, reduce the need for and value add of physical in-
| office presence I dare to claim by an order of magnitude.
|
| agreed, this needs a breed of collaborators who express
| themselves in writing, chat, mail, documents are _written_.
| however that can be learned, no?
|
| I hope companies make an informed an balanced decision moving
| back to the office intelligently.
|
| and on a tangent I hope and pray MS teams gets usable chat rooms,
| and better threaded message support. Office has collaborative
| editing, change tracking. a decent group chat is missing, and
| imnsho that's the life blood of remote.
| baby wrote:
| Not looking for a job, yet every time recruiters reach out to me
| on Linkedin I now ask if the role is remote. If they say no I say
| "sorry, only remote". I hope more people follow this movement :)
| alliao wrote:
| I like you. Thank you for the good work.
| wskinner wrote:
| This piece tells a compelling story. But it throws around enough
| casual assertions unsupported by evidence that I'm unsure what,
| if anything to conclude. For example:
|
| > "The Wall Street banks kept more teams in the office, so they
| seem to have done a lot better than Europeans." That may have
| been due to malfunctions on home-based tech platforms. But Beunza
| attributed it to something else: in-person teams had more
| incidental information exchange and sense-making, and at times of
| stress this seemed doubly important.
|
| This phrasing asserts that an observed affect may be due to one
| of two possible causes. Of course, the author attributes their
| observations to the phenomenon they are studying. They don't seem
| to have considered the possibility that either the American
| bankers are just better, or that disparate trading returns
| between banks in a given year might be explained by factors
| external to the trading team itself. This kind of sloppy
| reasoning calls the rest of the content into question - if a
| researcher is willing to make these inferences in one place, they
| are probably making them elsewhere.
|
| It's a nice story, though.
| lordnacho wrote:
| For most jobs, I would say working from home is just fine.
|
| But I've also worked on a trading floor.
|
| The difference is that on the trading floor, every interaction is
| mutexed. You can talk to one person at a time, or you can shout
| down one line at a time. Someone comes to your desk and they get
| nothing until the previous conversation ends.
|
| This works because you're mostly happy to delay whatever longer
| running projects you have on your desk, like fixing a
| spreadsheet. And because the information coming in on those
| conversations is high value, requiring immediate decisions.
|
| Most people are not doing things in this way. If you're deep
| coding, you especially don't want someone to come and bother you.
| There's not much value in immediate interruption.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| I have my reservations. I see it's problematic the views of
| modern anthropology espoused in the essay seem relegated to
| social interactions relegated to a modern conceptual framework
| which defines "work" and "the workplace", while disregarding how
| that framework is rooted in a far larger historical context.
|
| If anything, the modern notion of "work" as an employee-employer
| relationship with the primary goal of securing and sustaining a
| livelihood on the part of the employee, is barely 250 years old.
| And it's steeped in ideas and social dynamics which first emerged
| in the late 18th century which would spark the Industrial
| Revolution.
|
| The Industrial Revolution, above all, was a fundamental
| reorganization of society where economies shifted from localized
| labor found in tight-knit agrarian communities, towards
| concentrating labor in centralized industrial centers. This
| evolution was just as much driven by advances in technology as it
| was by shifts in modes of mobility, housing, urbanization,
| finance & banking, supply chains and so on. It also sparked
| massive migration of people moving from local communities towards
| these industrial centers. It's also important to note that this
| first happened in North America and Western Europe during the
| 19th and 20th century.
|
| This was by far an evolution which happened on equal footing. The
| centralization of work in factories, workshops, offices,... was
| mainly driven by capital, and therefore happened at the behest of
| industrial elites who, during these times, also secured power as
| financial and political elites.
|
| The notion that in order to secure a livelihood, one has to work
| in a centralized workplace, could easily be justified since the
| marketplace - labor, goods, services,... - was by and large based
| on manual labor, whether it was working textile, coal and iron
| mining, or other primary industries.
|
| Throughout the 20th century, that changed as work in erstwhile
| industrialized countries shifted through secondary towards
| tertiary industries where labor has become predominantly office
| based. So long as efficient communication between workers was
| impeded by the lack of technology, the obligation of "coming to
| the office" could be easily justified.
|
| In that regard, working in a centralized workplace has evolved
| into a widely accepted and deeply ingrained cultural norm, even
| though the digital revolution of the late 20th and early 21st
| century has deprecated any and all economic arguments to
| physically centralize labor in tertiary industries.
|
| And so, the article, to me at least, seems more or less
| reaffirming a cultural norm which emerged during the 19th and
| early 20th century which was established and pushed by industrial
| elites back in the day, and is still upheld by their present day
| successors: the centralized workplace is an absolute necessity
| for organization of society.
|
| The Marxist thinker Anthonio Gramsci coined the term "cultural
| hegemony" to describe such normative thinking:
|
| > In Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is the domination of a
| culturally diverse society by the ruling class which manipulates
| the culture of that society--the beliefs and explanations,
| perceptions, values, and mores--so that the imposed, ruling-class
| worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm; the universally
| valid dominant ideology, which justifies the social, political,
| and economic status quo as natural and inevitable, perpetual and
| beneficial for every social class, rather than as artificial
| social constructs that benefit only the ruling class. This
| Marxist analysis of how the ruling capitalist class (the
| bourgeoisie) establishes and maintains its control was originally
| developed by the Italian philosopher and politician Antonio
| Gramsci (1891-1937).
|
| (Personally, I have equal reservations in outright applying this
| term to this discussion, since Marxist thinking is equally shaped
| by the same changing affordances provided by society over the
| past 200 years. But I feel it's important to mention it here as
| this has been recognized and labeled by others as well.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony
|
| Barring precarious living conditions of pre-industrial life
| compared to the modern comforts enjoyed by the last 3 generations
| in the industrialized world, it's important to note that Humanity
| by and large lived - and in many parts of the world still lives -
| in tight-knit communities throughout the vast majority of
| (pre)history. Strong importance has always been given to
| familial, tribal or clan like relationships as those defined
| one's identity throughout life.
|
| In contrast, the Industrial Revolution and the drive to
| centralize the workforce has driven urbanization from which
| present day metropoles have emerged. But at the same time, it has
| also profoundly disrupted how humans interact with each other.
| Looking at Western European and American culture in the most
| broadest sense over the past 200 years, you can see a clear shift
| and how it became permeated by themes of alienation, loss,
| saudade, discomfort, deep struggle with identity,... as an answer
| to these profound, disruptive social changes.
|
| And so, the social and economic disruptions of the 19th and 20th
| century have left a deep legacy. And the specter of that legacy
| looms large over our present day lives in profound ways we likely
| haven't yet come to fully comprehend.
|
| Tangentially, I was left thinking about a concrete example: the
| HR industry and the approach of hiring individuals. The process,
| at the end of the day, is about figuring out one main question:
| is the candidate a "good fit" for the organization? What it
| really implies is this: "Can we put this random person in a group
| of 5 picked individuals who, in truth, have little in common and
| let them act together in a manner that creates a benefit for the
| employer for 8-10 hours a day in a physically limited space?"
| From my outline, it should be pretty clear that the HR industry
| is a cottage industry which tries to solve a problem which was
| artificially created by centralizing labor.
|
| As far as most employees are concerned, their co-workers aren't
| part of the original social tribe in which they first formed deep
| social connections: family, friends, clan, peers,... The main
| thing employees have in common, which drives them to work
| together, at the end of the day is a labor contract which they
| signed in order to secure their livelihood.
|
| For sure, I have to add nuance to those statements. Humans are
| flexible in forming social ties and cooperating in a central
| physical location isn't in and of itself problematic. In fact,
| there are as many different, complex contexts as their are humans
| out there, each living their own life. And plenty of people
| derive fulfillment, identity and satisfaction from banding and
| cooperating together. Many people forge profound friendships and
| relationships in the workplace as well. My expose above doesn't
| invalidate the psychology at an individual level.
|
| However, it would be rather disingenuous on the part of employers
| to expect that any and all individuals, without discerning their
| backgrounds, would willingly, and unquestioning, from the outset
| attach deep importance to social ties forged in a centralized
| workplace. Even the veil of anthropology doesn't take away the
| reductionism behind that view.
| Neil44 wrote:
| I speak to a real mix of people. There are a lot of dimensions in
| the logic matrix for working from home. Managers who want it or
| don't want it for either selfish or practical reasons. Employees
| who want it so they can slack off more (and managers who know
| that) Employees who want it because they can organise their lives
| better. Employees who don't want it because they like the
| separation or don't want it because they get too distracted at
| home. People who just miss the banter and camaraderie of the
| office. All these factors are at play in different ways for each
| individual and each department and each company. I don't feel
| there's a very clear consensus in any particular direction,
| except perhaps more people will have the option of WFH in general
| than before.
| dang wrote:
| All: this is a particularly information-rich and thoughtful essay
| which deserves better than its generic hot-topic title. HN has
| had dozens of generic WfH threads in the last year (actually, in
| every year). This deserves better, so please take some time to
| read and consider and comment on _specific_ insights or details
| in the OP, and try to avoid generic "WfH: Yay vs. Boo".
|
| Edit: I've pinched some language from the text that is more
| representative of what's _different_ about the article, and put
| it in the title above. Diffs are what 's interesting:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
| null_object wrote:
| I commented on the other thread - which became a generic
| WFH/office discussion - but one reason it devolved into that is
| this article isn't any more relevant to the core HN demographic
| than (say) a factory worker who's forced to go to work together
| with others every day.
|
| There are 2 specific things it seems to me to bring up: domain
| knowledge and 'tribal' rituals.
|
| There's no doubt in my mind that domain knowledge-sharing has
| suffered while I've been WFH: I started a new job during the
| pandemic, and it's been really hard to pick-up all the unknown-
| unknowns.
|
| But this is a practical problem that _can_ be overcome with the
| correct mindset and good tools. Instead of picking-up this
| essential work information in a discussion by the coffee-brewer,
| we simply need to be better at _documenting_ what a new employee
| needs to know; we need to be self-aware of how we share knowledge
| and how it disseminates in an organization.
|
| In other words, the practical things that the article finds are
| lacking in WFH _can be fixed_ if we want to.
|
| The other special element is the 'tribal' rituals, the adrenaline
| and team-spirit. Now even though that's _sometimes_ an element in
| programming - for instance hackdays - the atmosphere in a bank
| trading floor is totally separate to 99% of the rest of workers '
| experience.
|
| Probably a lot of things have changed since the 1990s, but I
| spent a lot of time with bankers in the City of London around
| that time (my brother worked at a bar there), and the 'tribal'
| aspect of these people was obvious in their behavior both in the
| office and socially. So I'm not at all surprised to hear that
| they performed differently while working separately in their
| homes (although I also note the authors don't strictly quantify
| what they mean by "performed better").
|
| For the record, I'd rather continue to WFH but doubt it will be
| possible as the 'normal' takes over again.
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