[HN Gopher] Why return to the office if you're just Zooming all ...
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Why return to the office if you're just Zooming all day anyway?
Author : CrankyBear
Score : 40 points
Date : 2021-10-05 18:41 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.computerworld.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.computerworld.com)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I often wonder if the benefits of automation in the corporate
| environment have yet to be realized...
|
| Perhaps a good fraction of the executives and board members could
| be replaced by autonomous AI systems with little effect on
| profitability and productivity, indeed perhaps a positive effect?
|
| The remote office setup might just be making this a more visible
| issue.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| That's its own dystopia that some companies have chosen to ramp
| up in the last year and a half.
|
| What metrics do you think represent a productive employee? How
| many minutes are spent in Zoom meetings? How busy their
| calendar looks? How often they wiggle the mouse?
|
| There's plenty of surveillance-ware companies have to already
| track those and more employee metrics. There's plenty of social
| media posts going viral of surveilled employees excitedly
| learning they can put a mechanical watch under the laser input
| of their mouse just so they can use the restroom or stretch
| their legs without getting dinged for being "unproductive" on
| "company time".
| cyberpsybin wrote:
| Have to bully wage slaves
| NathanielLovin wrote:
| I'm fine with remote work - people don't all need to be in the
| same place. I'm just tired of work from home. Internet speed,
| work/life balance, space for desk and monitors, etc.
|
| Hopefully WeWork etc. can fill some of that need.
| gremloni wrote:
| I was forced to get a private office because my internet
| connection at home is terrible. It really is the best of all
| worlds-- it lets me separate home from work effectively, I'm
| not worried about kicking my legs up and watching some YouTube
| videos when I have downtime between meetings, let's me
| concentrate on my work away from my wife and kids, it has a gym
| that I use everyday after work and is right next to a golf
| course where I play a round every Friday when we don't have any
| meetings or I don't have anything pressing to complete before
| the weekend.
| eigengrau5150 wrote:
| Do the Linux kernel devs use Zoom? Do they work together in one
| building? How about any of the BSDs? Do _they_ use Zoom or work
| together in one building -- aside from hackathons?
|
| No, but the rest of us are supposed to put up with this bullshit?
| Bosses and CEOs will literally force workers to Zoom from the
| office instead of going to therapy.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > No, but the rest of us are supposed to put up with this
| bullshit? Bosses and CEOs will literally force workers to Zoom
| from the office instead of going to therapy.
|
| Hashicorp is fully remote, they're always hiring, and I highly
| recommend the culture [1] (to name one enormously successful,
| remote first org). Lots of other orgs to pick from [2].
|
| You can't convince executives, who are dead set on return to
| office, on remote work anymore than you can convince a southern
| baptist there is no God. These are strongly held belief
| systems, not data driven decisions. Don't swim upstream; vote
| with your feet and don't work for orgs that make arbitrary
| requirements about where knowledge work is performed.
|
| Another path is legislation/regulation requiring businesses
| accommodate remote work when able (because, of course, you
| can't trust that they'll offer it out of the goodness of their
| hearts), but that takes more time and collective effort to
| accomplish [3].
|
| [1] https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/remote-culture-at-
| hashic...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28719320 (Control-F
| remote)
|
| [3] https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/10/03/which-countries-
| pla...
| ripper1138 wrote:
| No need to convince anyone or write new laws. If remote work
| is more efficient then it will win in the market eventually.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm entirely unconvinced that legislation is needed here. If
| remote-first is a winner, firms using it will outcompete
| those who don't. Forcing businesses against their will to
| make an accommodation isn't likely to put those accommodated
| workers onto an equal footing with those complying with
| return-to-office wishes. So you then pass _more_ legislation
| as a bad patch over your first ill-advised patch.
|
| Remote and in-office can both exist. If one is wildly better
| than the other, it will become dominant.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Because for many leaders, keeping their workers in the office
| comes down to asserting control.
| thehappypm wrote:
| edgy!
| fatnoah wrote:
| I've returned to the office for the two days per week that have
| the fewest meetings, and it feels like the right balance. There's
| still an opportunity for whiteboard time, getting up early 2 days
| in a week feels more like adventure and less like a slog. I'm
| actually surprised, since I thought I'd be one of those that
| needed to be in the office every day.
| swearwolf wrote:
| Because commercial real estate leases are long and chances are
| your company doesn't want to pay to break it. Not really a good
| reason, but a popular one I'd be willing to bet.
|
| Also sales people. More specifically sales managers. Who,
| incidentally, often go on to occupy executive level positions,
| taking their beliefs about the supremacy of face to face meetings
| with them.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > As a recent article from The Washington Post put it: "They're
| still spending most of their time isolated and glued to their
| computers for Zoom meetings, email, and Slack."
|
| At all companies I have worked for, teams sit together and talk
| directly. And Meeting rooms are full of people talking face to
| face. There are also international meetings, but that one are two
| or three meeting rooms with a team in each one, not people
| sitting individually.
|
| You may like to work from home or not, but this opinion piece is
| based in the authors personal experience, and it is at least
| different from mine in all companies I worked for.
|
| > Companies currently renting office space are just throwing
| money away if all of their employees are still doing the same
| thing at home that they were doing at work.
|
| I agree with this sentence, and if your company is doing this you
| should work from home if you want. I just do not think that it
| applies so widely as the article suggests.
| wetmore wrote:
| They're talking about the new normal, not the way things worked
| in your past jobs. For a current example, my girlfriend works
| at a huge corporation and has to return to the office now for
| at least 1 day a week. While in the office they are told not to
| hold meetings together, but to Zoom into meetings, even when
| everyone is in the same building.
| Hokusai wrote:
| That is not what my company is doing, first time I heard that
| a company does such a think. I agree that it makes little
| sense.
| lvl100 wrote:
| In my opinion, most office jobs are redundant. When the world
| went WFH, these jobs were exposed.
| thrower123 wrote:
| This is the way I've worked for ten years in offices. We stopped
| even bothering doing standups and staff meetings in the
| conference room because it was easier to take things from our
| desks.
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