[HN Gopher] Why can't software engineers work from home most of ...
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Why can't software engineers work from home most of the time?
(2016)
Author : LaserDiscMan
Score : 74 points
Date : 2021-07-26 19:02 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (workplace.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (workplace.stackexchange.com)
| dbrueck wrote:
| I've been working from home almost completely since 2009 and
| worked about half time from home since 2005. It's definitely not
| for everyone, but the only way I'll ever go back to an office is
| if it's literally the only option left. For me the biggest reason
| is the staggering amount of wasted time associated with going
| into the office generally, but specifically for software dev work
| it's an environment that is stacked against you.
| kube-system wrote:
| I think all of this stuff is still valid, given the context, and
| I say that as someone who has been working 100% remote years
| before COVID.
|
| Jobs are more than just a collection of people working
| independently. You really need buy-in at all levels of the
| organization to enable remote work to work optimally. Partially-
| remote or half-baked remote policies (or rushed, during COVID)
| often leads to organizational and cultural problems, unrelated to
| the individual work performance of individuals.
|
| I think if you ask anyone who already worked at a 100% remote
| organization before COVID, they'll tell you: being already 100%
| remote was a competitive advantage during COVID.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Being a remote organization is an advantage no matter what: it
| just means that things are more coherent, better documented and
| more tools are deployed to make an organization that ticks.
|
| Remote vs non remote is kind of like setting up a system from a
| GUI vs setting it up from a script. One is easier, very ad hoc
| and doesn't require planning other than intuition; the second
| requires deliberation but makes for a consistent, flexible and
| documented procedure.
| kube-system wrote:
| I think it is an advantage, at least, for businesses which do
| a type of work which doesn't require physical presence, and
| hires people who can function productively when remote. I
| don't think it works well if your organization doesn't do
| this, and I think it's very difficult to do a mix of remote
| and in-person (which is what the OP is about)
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| I actually liked working in the office. But maybe I was lucky
| having nice colleagues. During the COVID-19 home office year I
| initially hated working from home. I kind of got used to it over
| time and it is working better than expected.
|
| However:
|
| 1) I am definitely feel less productive and I find myself getting
| stressed out easily when something unexpected happens at work
| (live bugs for example).
|
| 2) I hate teams meetings. I mean the whole microphone/camera not
| working mess got much better. But I find these meetings less
| focused and less communicative. Nobody feels obliged to bring a
| meeting to a productive end (less than ordinarily).
|
| 3) I definitely experience a lack of communication across teams.
| I have no idea really what my colleagues are doing outside my
| team. Four to five people quit during the year and, personally, I
| have no idea what happened making them so dissatisfied.
|
| 4) I gained some weight due to the lack of commute and decreased
| mobility. During the warmer months I enjoyed my bicycle ride
| to/fro the office.
|
| 5) The commute also helped me to shut off my thoughts about work
| issues. Now, I carry them with me all the time and sometimes I
| return to work at night because I feel the need to finish
| something. I try to add breaks during the day to distance myself
| from working at home.
|
| All in all, I don't see why techies are so eager to isolate
| themselves at home. While my colleagues are certainly not good
| friends (which I don't have much) but I always enjoyed lunch time
| with them, chatting with them over a cup of coffee or enjoyed a
| team event outside the office. Living with and loving my family
| for many years it feels good from time to time to be a separate
| person with a separate realm from home.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Interesting. Myself:
|
| 1) I am definitely _more_ productive than in an office, almost
| by an order of magnitude. That is in a large part because of my
| specific personality idiosyncrasies (I get anxious in shared
| working environmens), so it doesn 't generalize.
|
| 2) Meetings I'm in are exactly the opposite - they're much more
| focused and productive. Probably because everyone has more
| interesting things to do than waste time on chit-chat over a
| videocall, so there's this constant pressure to either do
| something useful, or cancel the meeting.
|
| 3) This one matches my experience too. With no ability to just
| bump into people or notice they're there, I do feel as if my
| team is the entire company.
|
| 4) No change.
|
| 5) Sort of the same, except I consider it to be a feature more
| than a draw.
|
| > _All in all, I don't see why techies are so eager to isolate
| themselves at home._
|
| To this, the answer is simple: _autonomy_. You get to choose
| your own environment, your own pace; you can protect your
| personal space. And, you reclaim the time you wasted on
| commute, which you get to spend on what _you_ want. In my case,
| I 'm getting 2 hours of my life back every day. Some people are
| getting more.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Your experience matches what I see in offline contexts. I think
| comment sections online online have a disproportionately large
| number of people who prefer to get their social activity
| online. It's natural that people who spend a lot of time on
| forums, HN, Twitter, and social media would want their
| workplaces to also go remote.
|
| I take a lot of the remote-work perspective on HN with a grain
| of salt. It's easy to forget that HN is still a bubble online
| that doesn't necessarily represent the norms in the real world.
| aequitas wrote:
| > And not every s/w engineer works in the way described, eg pair
| programming is hard if one of you is at home.
|
| For me the pair programming experience has only improved with
| remote working. It's so much easier to share a screen in a remote
| call than to awkwardly huddle together around a small desk and
| look at a single 22" monitor or 15" laptop screen. Also it's
| easier for teammates to chime in into a call or ignore all
| together which is harder to do in an (open) office space without
| requiring headphones. Even onboarding new team members went
| better than I expected.
| Macha wrote:
| One question, two answers, top one with 7 votes and four
| comments.
|
| It would be interesting to see how predictions about work from
| home from pre-pandemic played out, but this isn't a great sample.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| And closed as "opinion-based."
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| 2016? Something new to add to this? Like maybe the thousand
| articles written in the past 18 months
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I think maybe the fact that it was written in 2016, and thus
| had pre-pandemic answers, is what made it interesting.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| fairplay perhaps, but there's lots of threads pre-pandemic
| also regarding work from home tips/opinions/pros/cons
| marto1 wrote:
| There is definitely a lack of trust going on in a lot of places.
| There is also the question of building relationships. Ask any
| sales person if he/she thinks warming up a relationship is easier
| face-to-face or from a distance.
|
| Then there is the fact that not everyone is efficient with WFH.
|
| Finally, if one manages to split his tasks in batches WFH/office
| hybrid could definitely become an option for many, e.g. work with
| team in office one week / work on long form client emails
| remotely. But that's a very big IF.
| timwaagh wrote:
| Because we're the modern equivalent of a slave. Slaves are always
| at their masters dwellings. They don't have 'home'. Obviously
| modern slaves do the same for the most part.
|
| We should count our lucky stars were not required to sleep at
| work.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| This reminds me of "The Tale of the Slave" from "Anarchy,
| State, and Utopia" https://fee.org/articles/the-tale-of-the-
| slave/
| black_13 wrote:
| This is absolutely correct the one thing we own is our time and
| having us in a contained space means control of the one piece
| of intrinsic property.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Except you are extremely well compensated and can quit at any
| time.
| bialpio wrote:
| Except sometimes just because you are able to quit doesn't
| mean you can quit. Hopefully that's less prevalent in IT, but
| does happen (e.g. people on work visas that cannot change
| their abusive employer w/o having to GTFO the country).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's simpler and more common than that.
|
| - Most people don't have significant savings. Even in IT.
|
| - Many people have dependents to support.
|
| - Quitting a job and finding a new one is a big hassle.
|
| - Your chances at finding a comparable job to your previous
| one are strongly correlated with your performance at your
| past jobs.
|
| Combined, this means almost no one can _just quit_ ,
| without putting themselves into immediate, moderate-to-high
| threat to the lives of themselves and their families.
| timwaagh wrote:
| Except it's not that way. You can't quit your job except to
| take another one. They have things like 'real estate market'
| and 'taxes' to ensure that. You can't quit in the way most
| people imagine quitting. We need this for the economy to
| function. Just like the Romans needed slavery for theirs. You
| are right about the compensation. That part has improved
| considerably. Still the supposedly appalling thing about
| slavery wasn't the lack of compensation but the lack of
| freedom.
| moate wrote:
| Yea but other than that and your management's inability to
| sell you to other companies, it's literally the exact same
| thing /s.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| I worked at a large American healthcare tech giant with a
| certain Wonka-esque private owner who famously said, when asked
| why she didn't support adding 'nap rooms' for employees,
| "That's what your desks are for."
| anarticle wrote:
| Maybe you should take a walk. No one is shackling you to a six
| figure salary. Get some perspective.
| motohagiography wrote:
| A friend and I who have known each other for decades say we
| manage to stay friends because we only see each other a couple of
| times a year.
|
| Why burden business relationships with forced several hours /week
| physical presence and face time when nobody would impose that on
| a customer or a vendor, and lockdowns have shown that even
| (especially) marriages aren't designed for people to be stuck
| together that long.
|
| The only other situation you spend that amount of time with
| someone is a cellmate in prison, and the inevitable and necessary
| conseqeunce is micro-power struggles over the least significant
| things because in spending that much time together, you literally
| exhaust every other way to relate.
|
| Show me someone who loves office life and being around people who
| are forced to be together, and I will show you someone with a
| perverse addiction to confict. When extroversion becomes
| immoderate, they become masochists who crave attention and
| interpersonal intensity. As a result, whenever someone tells me
| they are a "people person," I give them a wide berth because I
| remember the advice I was given as a young boy which was, "you
| are what you eat."
|
| I can't imagine re-adapting to something so insane as an office
| ever again.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _I can 't imagine re-adapting to something so insane as an
| office ever again._
|
| It might be safe to say that one group likes being in the same
| physical space as their peers [0] and another doesn't, and that
| both these groups are judging each other for their choice
| (typical in-group / out-group bias).
|
| > _Why burden business relationships with forced several hours
| /week physical presence when nobody would impose that on a
| customer or a vendor, and lockdowns have shown that even
| (especially) marriages aren't designed for people to be stuck
| together that long._
|
| See also: Chesterton's fence when advocating for fundamental
| changes in the way things work [1].
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7434444
|
| [1] https://fs.blog/2020/03/chestertons-fence/
| blastro wrote:
| Beautifully expressed post, I just wanted to let you know I
| appreciate your writing style and what you've written resonates
| deeply with my experience as well.
| turtlebits wrote:
| I appreciate your opinion, but you use words like
| "impose"/"force" and bring up prison.
|
| You have the choice to choose your own employer and if you
| don't like the terms, the choice to leave.
|
| A lot of people were hired on the condition of going into the
| office and I find it all the backlash from employees after
| being asked to go back into the office a bit absurd.
| gravypod wrote:
| Some light game theory to add to this discussion....
|
| > A lot of people were hired on the condition of going into
| the office and I find it all the backlash from employees
| after being asked to go back into the office a bit absurd.
|
| For all of the negative stuff coming from people who do not
| want to return to an office I find one thing in common: they
| all usually really like their company and job.
|
| While "If you don't like it, leave" is the reality of the
| situation it doesn't change that this is somewhat irrational
| behavior. It is the {CEO, Boss, Manager}'s decision as to who
| gets to work remote obviously. That's the power dynamic at
| hand. However, if you think of this in any other situation
| you can see that there's something about remote work that
| makes some managers loose their cool. Imagine employees
| saying this:
|
| 1. I have back pain and if I had an (ergonomic chair|standing
| desk) I'd be able to work for longer without getting up and
| walking around. This would make me more productive.
|
| 2. The coffee machine makes bad coffee and everyone walks to
| the coffee shop across the street 3 times a day. If we just
| got good grinds and a machine in the office we'd all save
| money and we'd save ~1hr/day/engineer on context switching
| for coffee.
|
| A {CEO, Boss, Manager) has _every_ right to say: "If you
| don't like your (coffee|desk|chair) then you can leave" but
| they are obviously acting pretty childish here. If you look
| at all of these situations logically you're looking for a
| small input effort for a large continuous return on
| investment.
|
| If you add into the fact that myself, and many others, think
| working from home makes us MUCH more productive you can
| arrive at the following conclusions:
|
| 1. We are not more productive, we just think we are. 2. We
| _are_ more productive, and we commute less (save money +
| sanity).
|
| If we think out this decision matrix: -
| Employee + !Productive, Boss + WFH: the employee is no more
| productive - maybe even slightly less productive - and this
| comes up in their performance reviews and they're asked to
| come back to the office. The employee will probably see that
| WFH does not work for them if this performance review is fair
| (ex not "You called into the meeting but since you didn't
| come in person you were obviously not listening as well").
| - Employee + Productive, Boss + !WFH: The employee can quit
| and find a WFH company. The employee may be willing to accept
| *less* money and will produce *more* value for the new
| employer. This new employer now has a major leg up (in most
| industries) over the old employer. - Employee +
| !Productive, Boss + !WFH: The employee could still jump to
| another company for less wages at a lower output if WFH means
| a lot to them. - Employee + Productive, Boss +
| WFH: Company gains efficiency for no extra money. Employee is
| happier.
|
| In this chart we see in every situation except one the
| employee wins out over the company. In the situations in
| which the employer allows the employee to try WFH the
| employer wins out massively: their employee is either happy
| that they were given a chance or the company has found a way
| to make someone much more productive.
| turtlebits wrote:
| The change is just returning to status quo, it's not giving
| up some right that you already had.
|
| Most companies are asking for partial return to office,
| which IMO is already a concession, and people are up in
| arms over it.
|
| I'm not against remote work, I just think people are being
| too entitled about it.
| gravypod wrote:
| > I'm not against remote work, I just think people are
| being too entitled about it.
|
| Does this not personify the relationship with the company
| a bit here? This is a negotiation. Skilled laborers have
| the ability to throw their weight around here a bit.
|
| I personally don't think using bargaining power and
| leverage to ask for more (perks, pay, etc) is
| entitlement. The employer is allowed to say "no" and the
| employee is allowed to look for some place else that will
| say yes.
|
| I think the mental framing that "people are up in arms
| over it" might be playing a bit into how you envision
| this working out. Most people I've spoken to have just
| said something like "I really liked working from home and
| if my boss asks me to come back I'll look for another
| job".
| kelnos wrote:
| > _You have the choice to choose your own employer and if you
| don 't like the terms, the choice to leave._
|
| That assumes two things:
|
| 1) That a company exists that will grant you your (let's
| presume reasonable) terms, and
|
| 2) That there are enough companies accepting those terms such
| that there are enough jobs available for everyone who wants
| those terms.
|
| My ideal job would be a part-time gig where I get the
| benefits of a full-time gig (health insurance, 401k, equity,
| etc.), but can choose my hours (essentially 100% flexibly),
| perhaps with some sort of weekly minimum, and get paid by the
| number of hours worked. It would be fully remote, and I could
| work from wherever I want. But there are very few companies
| that will agree to terms like that (maybe even _no_
| companies), even though I 'd be just as (probably more)
| productive than their "standard" full-time employees.
|
| > _A lot of people were hired on the condition of going into
| the office and I find it all the backlash from employees
| after being asked to go back into the office a bit absurd._
|
| It's not absurd, it's people who have traditionally been on
| the bad end of a power imbalance (employees) finally getting
| the flexibility they've always wanted, proving that they can
| be just as productive that way, and then being pissed off
| that employers are requiring them to go back into the office
| for little reason other than management's desire to control
| their employees' lives.
|
| And it's really funny that you find that absurd, because many
| of them are doing _exactly_ what you claim they should do:
| leave and find a different employer that will accept their
| terms. Post-pandemic there are a lot more employers that will
| accept flexible /remote work arrangements than there were
| previously, and employers that are requiring employees to
| come back to the office are going to lose some talent.
| dbrueck wrote:
| That ideal job can exist, though you may have to create the
| company yourself (that's what I ended up doing). We were
| very small (5-7 people) and thought it'd be fun to try out
| different forms of compensation, so after some
| experimentation we settled on:
|
| - very healthy hourly rate - min commit of X hours per
| month (I think it was 80), then work as few or as many as
| you want beyond that (though for planning purposes we'd
| often ask people to give us a rough idea of their plans for
| the next few weeks) - various bonuses that would kick in
| when the group reached different milestones each month
| (this was a consulting company, so a lot of them revolved
| around billable hours) - no additional paid benefits at all
|
| That last one took the most time for people to get on board
| with initially, but ultimately proved to be really popular.
| I think it had to do with how entrenched the mindset is
| around the norm, but concepts like getting paid even though
| you're not working, or having your employer be involved
| with your health insurance are pretty odd if you think
| about it. Things like sick leave, paid time off, etc. are
| also things that look nice on paper but IMO tend to be a
| net loss for employees - they tend to be assigned inflated
| values by the companies and are used as leverage against
| employees.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is what is happening. People talking about it with their
| employers before bouncing is not that surprising, especially
| in a situation that is in flux.
| Salgat wrote:
| I think part of it is also that some people create a dependence
| on forced social interaction to address their own loneliness,
| instead of developing healthy friendships outside the
| workplace.
| closeparen wrote:
| A healthy friendship outside the workplace is maybe 25 hours
| per month of contact, at the upper end. That's meeting
| frequently for meals and spending 25-50% of weekends
| together. If you manage to have 3 of those, that's 75 hours a
| month of being around other people. Still quite far from the
| 160 built into an office job.
|
| I don't think friendship is a substitute for the
| socialization an office provides. A roommate situation might
| be, but that has other serious challenges.
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| Easier said than done in today's world, unfortunately.
| Salgat wrote:
| While true, that's to blame on COVID, not WFH.
| dublinben wrote:
| The book Bowling Alone is about this trend of declining
| social capital and connection in the US, and was
| published in 2000. This is a modern phenomenon, which
| transcends any intensification during the last 18 months.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
| aksss wrote:
| COVID makes it worse, but the erosion of participation in
| structured social groups (fraternal organizations, sports
| leagues, churches, etc.) has been on the decline for a
| long, long time. Less participation means less funding
| means less outreach means even less participation means
| less groups in total, means less participation, etc.;
| down and down it goes. Now even the paycheck-compelled
| participation in the office environment is eroding.
|
| For many people, making new friends as an adult gets
| harder with age. Part of that is that we're not compelled
| to join things like we were as children. Part of it is
| that we have the cumulative time and means to create our
| own favored environments - my house has some kick-ass
| stuff in it and air conditioning, so why would I leave
| it? :D I kid, but kinda not.
|
| As I've gotten older, I've made a point to get more
| involved in entirely voluntary organizations (collector's
| groups, church, etc) and it takes work. It's rewarding on
| the balance - good for my personal growth and good for
| the group assuming they would agree that I bring a
| modicum of value to the table - but it takes a dedication
| that doesn't come easy. Kind of like exercise, right?
|
| An antipattern here is expecting to replicate your
| quality childhood friendships quickly. Friendships,
| particularly intimate friendships, take a long time and
| many shared experiences. 80% of the job is just showing
| up, so nothing kills budding friendship opportunities
| like flaking out one too many times. Show up!
| recov wrote:
| This is something that took me a bit to realize. I've made
| some friends at work that do things outside of work, but
| building relationships/friendships outside of work are
| usually more meaningful and last longer.
| londondev45 wrote:
| Well said
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| > Show me someone who loves office life and being around people
| who are forced to be together, and I will show you someone with
| a perverse addiction to confict.
|
| I see where you are coming from, but honestly the workplace is
| one of the rare places someone can easily make friends after
| 30, precisely because someone is forcing you to be together
| with other people.
|
| There are obviously other ways to do this (hobbies, etc) but
| they typically aren't as simple and you're now setting up a
| second thing you need to participate in. I don't think people
| love being in the office; they love being with other people
| instead of being stuck by themselves in their home or quietly
| sitting by themselves in a coffee shop.
| fossuser wrote:
| I think good marriages work with the couple in close proximity
| for extended periods of time.
|
| Many people are in bad relationships. Many married people spend
| little time together.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Show me someone who loves office life and being around people
| who are forced to be together, and I will show you someone with
| a perverse addiction to confict.
|
| In my experience, being forced to be a Slack @tag or DM away
| from coworkers who see you as a screen name rather than a face
| is far worse for conflict.
|
| Remote work doesn't mean employees get to withdraw from social
| interaction and isolate themselves. It just moves the
| interaction to a different medium.
|
| I've managed in-person, mixed, and full-remote teams. Conflict
| always gets more heated in the remote teams. When you're in the
| office with someone and talking face to face, people are more
| likely to treat each other like humans. When you're trying to
| communicate through emotionless Slack text all day, some people
| misinterpret harmless comments as being aggressive and struggle
| to treat their coworkers differently than screen names in an
| internet flame war.
| BirdieNZ wrote:
| > Show me someone who loves office life and being around people
| who are forced to be together, and I will show you someone with
| a perverse addiction to confict. When extroversion becomes
| immoderate, they become masochists who crave attention and
| interpersonal intensity. As a result, whenever someone tells me
| they are a "people person," I give them a wide berth because I
| remember the advice I was given as a young boy which was, "you
| are what you eat."
|
| I'm quite surprised that this is a large part of the top
| comment. I'm not an extrovert but I love office life, despite
| its flaws. The primary flaws of office life for me are:
|
| 1. Commute. Currently not a problem but it will be in the
| future for me. 2. Open plan offices are the norm and make
| focusing more difficult. 3. Slight more difficulty in eating
| home-cooked food as if you aren't organised, you end up buying
| lunch rather than cooking at home.
|
| I don't think I have a perverse addiction to conflict.
|
| Major advantages of working in an office include:
|
| 1. I work more productively usually. The environment helps me
| focus, rather than goof off. 2. It is much easier to have
| impromptu coffee and lunch conversations and interesting
| discussions, both work related and otherwise. This increases
| team social bonding and speeds up knowledge transfer. 3. The
| people I work with in the office regularly are easier to relate
| to and think well of than faces online.
| masterof0 wrote:
| I know your way of thinking is quite popular here, but I will
| take my chances anyway. If your friend says that seriously,
| then friendship is not what you guys have, at least in the
| traditional sense, I see my friends often, I enjoy seeing them
| and having conversations, playing, etc... Saying people who are
| fine talking to other human beings face to face, are craving
| attention is ridiculous, that's how we have been doing things
| since the beginning. Also, no one is forced to be together, you
| can always find a remote gig, or do freelance work or another
| career altogether. Lots of people love to go to an office an
| interact with another human beings, you don't need to be
| extroverted. I do respect your perspective, and I think is
| totally fine, but trying to associate social people with some
| sort of masochism is ridiculous. I know , nowadays, being a
| regular social human , is not as cool as being introverted , or
| "in the spectrum" (in the spectrum myself), instead of lashing
| on other people, maybe you can get yourself a more comfy setup
| and a gig that allows you to not talk to others, and just code
| your way to the moon.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I think it's equally ridiculous to say that because someone's
| friendship is not like your, in person face to face
| interaction, friendship then its not real.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| That's why he added that caveat about traditional...
| masterof0 wrote:
| I didn't say it wasn't real, I said, that in the
| traditional sense, friends like to meet? you know, be
| friends? But nice try.
| lsaferite wrote:
| > then friendship is not what you guys have
|
| That sounds a lot like you are claiming their friendship
| isn't real to me.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| This reminds me of Penn & Teller's account of making it as a
| team for decade after decade. They see each other socially only
| 3 or 4 times a year.
|
| Source: https://youtu.be/rv_Xkz9zepI?t=1259
| feifan wrote:
| I can't speak to your office environment, but in all the
| offices I've worked in, I haven't been "forced" to interact
| with coworkers more than I want to. Being at the office gives
| me the option to engage in high-bandwidth IRL communication
| when necessary, and to not interact/ignore other people when
| I'm busy with something.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I think it can be healty to maintain a strict "home is home"
| and "work is work" separation. Home is then a place of
| escape/relaxation/recharging where work does not interfere.
|
| Some people can manage that separation with a home office.
| Others prefer a physically separate workplace.
|
| For me, I didn't think I would like WFH. When forced over the
| last year, it was better than expected. Certainly not having a
| commute was nice, not having to "dress up" for work was nice,
| but both my productivity and the amount of direction on
| tasks/priorities fell off a cliff. Interruptions were about the
| same, but when they come from spouse/kids (especially spouse)
| they are harder to deflect.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Home is then a place of escape /relaxation/recharging
| where work does not interfere._
|
| Or the other way around. That's the rarely stated but
| arguably common case, particularly for middle-age people:
| office is a place of escape/relaxation/recharging where your
| spouse and your little children and/or your inlaws don't
| interfere.
|
| I love my WFH, I have it worked out with my wife and our
| family, and I don't want to ever have to work in an office on
| a regular basis - but I do understand this point. Parenting
| is hard. Marriage is hard - and COVID in particular threw a
| lot of people into uncharted territory. Despite all the
| romantic ideals and the condescending opinions of some
| people, modern marriage in western world is designed around
| partners spending significant time apart. Our current
| pandemic suddenly forced every couple to live a lifestyle
| most don't experience until retirement. Few were ready for
| this.
| masterof0 wrote:
| Exactly, some people can't afford to have a office room, and
| just shut the doors closed until 5PM.
| [deleted]
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I would be interested to hear the opinions of anyone who was at
| Yahoo when they went to remote-friendly, and then went back again
| (all pre-pandemic). The story heard on the outside was that
| remote work was not working out, but I never heard the inside
| story.
|
| I am a contract programmer, and I have worked both in office,
| remotely, and also hybrid (3/2). I have no strong opinion on the
| matter. But, I always know I'm temporary, by choice, so the fact
| that I'm not really making strong connections doesn't bother me,
| and my loyalty to the company isn't an issue because I'm a "hired
| gun". Yahoo apparently encountered something they found to be a
| problem with too many people working remotely, and I'd like to
| know how it all looked from "ground level".
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I would be interested to hear the opinions of anyone who was
| at Yahoo when they went to remote-friendly, and then went back
| again (all pre-pandemic). The story heard on the outside was
| that remote work was not working out, but I never heard the
| inside story.
|
| I think Yahoo had much bigger issues to tackle at the time.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Coding by yourself can obviously done anywhere. Working with
| other people is much faster and easier in person, and arguably
| the more important part of the job for high level engineers. This
| is why I think hybrid office/remote is a pretty solid approach.
| flowerlad wrote:
| > _Working with other people is much faster and easier in
| person_
|
| Does "in person" mean sitting next to each other? Or can they
| be in different rooms?
|
| I have seen developers collaborating over Slack even when they
| are in the same floor in the same building. And if
| collaborating over Slack works then it doesn't matter if you're
| in the same building... or even in the same town.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| I find it much easier to collaborate over Zoom when I have all
| my screen space and computer to myself. I prefer it so much
| that I actually changed our company weeklies to be remote-
| first.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| 100%. I was used to only working with other engineers over
| zoom. I started going into the office and I was shocked when
| I realized I either had to sit with my laptop on my lap which
| is inferior to my own set up or just follow along as someone
| else used their computer which I couldnt see well.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Companies pay you for your output. The notion that they own your
| attention from 9-5 is ludicrous, right? Even in the office, we
| won't harass our employees if they close their eyes and meditate
| or they practice pen-spinning or reciting digits of pi, provided
| they're getting their job done.
|
| And yet if they're at home, and they want to take breaks to
| improve their quality of living, this is suddenly a massive trust
| issue? In the past, commuting, we forced them to take two huge
| anti-breaks just so we can stare at them and so they can chit-
| chat with others? I just never agreed with the butts-in-the-
| cubicle-chair and the value of water-cooler gab.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > The notion that they own your attention from 9-5 is
| ludicrous, right?
|
| It's not necessarily about attention, but about availability.
| Companies shouldn't care if employees take short breaks away
| from the computer while working remote. However, unless the
| business truly has perfectly isolated, asynchronous units of
| work to give everyone, you do need some level of availability
| to co-work with people and discuss things together.
|
| Most remote companies end up with some core working hours where
| everyone is expected to be online and available for
| collaboration. Without this, it becomes a scheduling nightmare
| to try to get people online to answer questions or collaborate.
| Communitivity wrote:
| I think there are two main reasons cited by companies. First,
| protection of IP - they see it as easier to protect Intellectual
| Property if work is done on site (this is 10x for government
| contracts). Second, there is a fear that employees are goofing
| off. I've found I generally work harder remote, to ensure I am
| visibly being productive. The belief in many managers though is
| that if you're not 'butt in seat' at the office then they can't
| look over what you are doing.
|
| I don't think either of these arguments hold water, for the
| reasons below.
|
| First, with a VPN and modern controls on means of exfiltration
| you are able to maximize your protection against IP theft as well
| as to monitor your developers (see second point below though).
| That said, if a smart thief is going to steal your data, if they
| have physical access, if they are willing to accept the risk
| (this places doubt on smarts), and if they put the time and
| effort in, then they will likely manage to steal something.
|
| Next, trust your people, but verify. Hire the best you can, pay
| them well so they are happy, and treat them like valued people.
| When hiring use background investigations, etc. to vet. The more
| you monitor, the more you say you don't trust them. The more they
| don't feel trusted, the less happy they'll be. The less happy
| they are, the more likely they are to leave or worse, commit the
| theft.
|
| Last, a riff off the previous point. If you get good people,
| treat them well (incl. help when they have issues), and trust
| them to do their jobs - most people will perform at their best in
| a reliable and consistent manner.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Second, there is a fear that employees are goofing off. I've
| found I generally work harder remote, to ensure I am visibly
| being productive. The belief in many managers though is that if
| you're not 'butt in seat' at the office then they can't look
| over what you are doing.
|
| It's easy, just look at the pull requests!
|
| If your manager can't look at a PR and figure out what's going
| on, that's a red flag.
|
| If goofing off is a big concern, you are hiring wrong.
| kelnos wrote:
| Also on the "trust but verify" bit: you don't have to hire
| someone new and immediately give them the keys to the kingdom.
| Gradually build trust, and don't give an employee access to
| sensitive internal information until they've shown they can be
| trusted with it.
| chitowneats wrote:
| "I've recently quit a job that required a 2 hour+ commute (4-5
| hour total)."
|
| The job did not require that. This individual chose to live in an
| exurb.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| How do you know they live in an exurb? Maybe they just live in
| a town two hours away? Why do they live in that town and work
| in another? Maybe they have family or social responsibilities
| that force it - I don't know and neither do you.
| chitowneats wrote:
| It's absolutely the most likely scenario. I'm making a point.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > It's absolutely the most likely scenario.
|
| I don't think so. I know many people who for example wanted
| to keep their children in the same school so commute for a
| new job. I don't know anyone who commutes through two hours
| of suburbs? Where can you even do that? Los Angeles maybe?
|
| > I'm making a point.
|
| Well what is it?
| kilbuz wrote:
| Or San Francisco.
| aksss wrote:
| Maybe "I recently quite a job/quality of life balance that
| necessitated a 2 hour+ commute".
|
| Modifying one of those (ideally the job half) to eliminate that
| commute is a great choice if available.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Some other more empathetic reasons:
|
| 1. They live in one city, and received a job in another. 2
| hours would be Philadelphia to DC or NYC for example. But they
| can't get a more local job (those don't exist, they can't land
| them, etc.)
|
| 2. They can't move for some reason. Their partner can't get
| another job. Their children are in a school and they don't want
| to move them until they graduate. Their parents are family are
| nearby and they must be near them, medical issues are possible,
| elderly, etc.
|
| 3. They just really love where they live
|
| 4. They Can't afford to live.
| deanCommie wrote:
| 4. is likely not true - software positions at worst are
| decently middle class.
|
| 3. is an argument against empathy. they made their choice to
| prioritize where they are living over commute. That's exactly
| OP's point.
|
| 1. again, if they choose not to relocate then the commute is
| their responsibility not the job's fault.
|
| 2. is the main point i now have a lot of sympathy for now
| that I have kids. Kids benefit from continuity and uprooting
| your whole life for one of the partner's jobs is somewhat
| selfish.
|
| But even in that situation, I feel like the onus is still on
| the person - they are choosing their kids over their commute.
| The commute isn't for the job. The commute is for the kids.
| Jcowell wrote:
| Hopefully this isn't from delusions but there ARE SE
| positions with very bad pay especially when what class you
| eligible for depends on where you live. Software positions
| at worst can be lower class.
| xjlin0 wrote:
| 4. is actually true -- in certain SF bay area it probably
| needs 2 dev salaries to get a house now.
| chitowneats wrote:
| I fail to see how this is at all relevant to whether or
| not we should return to in person work. If the Bay Area
| truly is unlivable, that strikes me as a local political
| concern. A place with that much wealth surely could have
| built more housing, infrastructure, etc, but the local
| population chose not to. Either vote with your feet or
| live with the consequences of the life you and your
| neighbors chose.
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