[HN Gopher] I hope distributed is not the new default
___________________________________________________________________
I hope distributed is not the new default
Author : pcr910303
Score : 136 points
Date : 2022-04-15 08:19 UTC (14 hours ago)
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| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Maybe there is a balance?
|
| We don't have to be 100% either.
|
| We do need to build human trust and relationships, and you can't
| do that with remote easily. Also, communications are slower and
| full of paper cuts that will make any task requiring to gather a
| lot from different people harder with remote.
|
| Those 2 things make onboarding much harder.
|
| Young people are also the one that are paying the most cost from
| remote:
|
| - they are the ones with the less autonomy, which makes remote
| either very unproductive or make the task super hard.
|
| - they don't learn anything about politics, which remote hides
| from view, and maybe reduces a little, but doesn't remove.
|
| - they are already deep in the culture distractions, which is
| incredibly tempting in remote.
|
| How course, remote work has so many benefits it may very well
| offset all that. Time will tell I guess.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > While working from home certainly increases the amount of
| control that people have over their day, it does so at the cost
| of essentially all of these chance encounters.
|
| How much value do you actually get from those chance encounters?
| My experience, after years in everyday in the office, is very,
| very little. It's like playing lottery everyday, there's not much
| you earn under all probabilities.
| agumonkey wrote:
| And it's not like it's a potential Oasis while talking a long
| cool hike. Office can be a minefield.. maybe you get lucky, but
| the life distortion effect of a bad building are too strong to
| ignore.
| jdauriemma wrote:
| RE: traveling to socialize with distributed coworkers:
|
| As a person with three children and a working spouse who's busier
| than I am, and as a person managing a distributed team, the
| notion of convening my colleagues in one area for a team-building
| event is stressful. I recently have been given budget to do so
| and have been volun-told to organize such an event. Many of my
| direct reports are eager to meet up in-person. I value their
| happiness so I will to oblige them. And I'm not going to lie, it
| sounds like fun - I really do like the people I work with.
| However, being away from my family for days is a hardship for my
| children and my spouse, who already has enough stress and is
| unaccustomed to being the day-to-day caregiver. Since those are
| the people I value most highly, it's hard for me to justify the
| time, expense, and effort involved with traveling for the sole
| purpose of socializing with my coworkers.
| thex10 wrote:
| I can relate to this. Honestly it's just one of many ways our
| society is not structured to adequately support caregivers.
|
| Disclosure: I am a working remote parent who misses meeting
| with her team greatly.
| imglorp wrote:
| There's another aspect to meatspace, which is asymmetric loyalty.
|
| Most corporations are single-minded AI's with strictly zero
| loyalty to any worker without title =~ /^C..$/. The instant some
| spreadsheet cell turns yellow upstairs, you're out.
|
| Due to the human firmware drive of expected reciprocity, people
| often forget this and make enormous sacrifices for $work,
| uprooting their families, working long hours, missing family
| events, etc. When making this sacrifice of loyalty, they expect
| the AI to reciprocate in kind with loyalty but THE AI DOES NOT
| HAVE THAT FEELING.
|
| I recently joined a hot fintech only to have several offices
| closed and people sacked 5 months later, in order to keep an IPO
| route looking shiny (it wasn't).
|
| My advice to juniors is do not sacrifice for that machine.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Incidentally, this is also Hobbes' view of the state, namely
| that it's an automaton.
| russellendicott wrote:
| For me, I agree that remote work doesn't work as well as
| collocation. Remote work is great for workers but terrible for
| managers and company efficiency.
|
| The type of work I do doesn't translate well to JIRA tickets. It
| takes 3 whiteboard sessions, 5 meetings, and a water cooler
| conversation to come up with something resembling a work item
| that isn't a complete waste of someone's time.
|
| Remote work is great for workers who can pull work from a queue.
| It's terrible for the people trying to fill the queue with
| quality work items.
|
| So I guess it all depends on what you want to do with your
| career.
| marmada wrote:
| How do remote startups function? Back in my startup days, my
| cofounder & I lived in the same house when we were founding. We
| slept in the same room in order to synchronize sleep schedules as
| well. Bandwith was (as expected) super high. Immediate
| communication over issues while still allowing for uninterrupted
| work time. Being able to point at your screen and say "take a
| look" is super powerful.
|
| It reminds me of ML where the bottleneck is often the bandwith
| between the GPUs.
|
| And as expected working side by side / living in the same house
| dramatically increased productivity. I couldn't imagine a remote
| employee being as motivated.
|
| TL;DR -- startups need a certain workaholic mentality /
| intensity. In-person work can provide this.
|
| In defense of remote: We didn't have a commute, which saved us at
| least 1.5 hours a day.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > How do remote startups function? Back in my startup days, my
| cofounder & I lived in the same house when we were founding. We
| slept in the same room in order to synchronize sleep schedules
| as well. Bandwith was (as expected) super high. Immediate
| communication over issues while still allowing for
| uninterrupted work time. Being able to point at your screen and
| say "take a look" is super powerful.
|
| I'm starting a startup now. There is no way that I am ever
| going to be pointing at a screen and telling my cofounder "take
| a look". My cofounder will not be a tech guy, he'll be a sales,
| marketing and customer-contact guy.
|
| A business is "product + distribution".
|
| There is very little point in having two cofounders who are
| both focusing only one of the above two variables. I think it
| is a recipe for failure, and so I will not be doing that.
| k__ wrote:
| I'd rephrase it to:
|
| _" Certain types of companies need a certain workaholic
| mentality"_
|
| The way you describe led to monoculture and I hope this isn't
| the only way to do things.
|
| Wasn't there a saying that your software will resemble your
| company structure? I don't know if a software resembling two
| people sleeping in an office is a good structure to base your
| software on.
| gedy wrote:
| Hate to sound dismissive but I've worked with people who can't
| communicate very well unless it's in person. Writing/reading
| causes a lot of misunderstandings for them due to comprehension
| or patience, and video calls don't seem to work very well for
| them as they are typical scheduled and have less body language.
|
| This is fine, but I do disagree with those people saying
| "remote doesn't work" for startups, etc. It's just them.
| golergka wrote:
| I work at such a startup. We all live in different countries
| and different timezones. Everybody has a high level of autonomy
| and decision-making working on his own stuff. Most of product
| communication happens in comments on Jira and technical -- in
| PR comments on Github, both of which are completely async.
| There's also Slack for some realtime interaction, but it's okay
| not to be online. At average, I'd say that I have one or two
| video calls a week, and I don't feel that I need more.
|
| It's one of the most productive environments I had in my entire
| 15 year career.
| presentation wrote:
| I run a globally distributed startup - we still have very
| responsive communication but a) it's not everyone on the team
| that's a workaholic since not everyone prefers to be always
| "on" like that, and so that's fine, they contribute in other
| ways; b) we have to be a bit more strategic about timing since
| you can't powwow with someone unless that person's awake, and
| c) we spend more effort explicitly aligning since misalignment
| can waste a ton of time, so in a way it's upgraded the quality
| of our communication. I personally think it's been fine, and as
| a result we have a much bigger hiring pool and are getting as
| much done as any startup in SV I've worked at.
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| Don't worry. Managers will never let distributed or remote be the
| default. People would eventually realize that we don't really
| need managers except a couple times a year. They need to be in-
| person so they can be seen around the office, so people will
| assume they're necessary.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| This is only true for bad managers. I'm very used to having
| managers as friends and weekly 1x1s talking strategy.
|
| Well, I was used to it until I retired. An important aspect of
| retiring was understanding management's role and be allied in
| the company's direction.
| simoneau wrote:
| It makes me sad if future generations of programmers never have
| the experience of working with a team in-person. I know it
| doesn't suit everyone's work style or life style. I'm not even
| arguing it's more productive. But it can be a lot more fun!
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Getting out of the house and into a setting with other human
| beings builds a heck of a lot more socialization into your day
| than sitting at home in your office. While it's certainly
| possible that some people working from home will choose to
| socialize more, I predict that the majority of people will
| socialize less as they have fewer opportunities to meet and talk
| with people built into their days.
|
| When you are in control, you are in control of everything. Means
| that if you need to get exercise everyday, you need to make it a
| habit to go and walk outside during your remote working day.
|
| As for socializing, I find that very reductive to think that "the
| people you work with in an office are great for socialization".
| Nope, I don't choose those people, so I'd rather invest my time
| socializing with people I choose, which will probably not be the
| people I am forced to work with.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > As for socializing, I find that very reductive to think that
| "the people you work with in an office are great for
| socialization". Nope, I don't choose those people, so I'd
| rather invest my time socializing with people I choose, which
| will probably not be the people I am forced to work with.
|
| I agree. I'm happy to "socialise" to the extent that it
| facilitates getting work done. But I'm not looking for new
| pals, I'm just here to do the work and get paid, I have a
| separate life outside of the workplace. Maybe it's just an age
| thing but I don't want to do company pizza night, or company
| skiing or company drinks, for me work is a means to an end.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I really like the company I presently work
| for, get on well with my colleagues, even push the boat out and
| do a few extra hours to get a project over the line or to help
| others, but it is just work and that's it.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I suppose it's a different mindset. I'm not friends with
| anyone at work in the sense that we hang out after hours, or
| that I'd call them if I needed help with a personal problem.
| But it's still hard for me to think of it as "just work and
| that's it". I'm glad to be "work pals" with these people and
| want the best for them personally as well as professionally.
|
| I agree that _work_ is a means to an end, but the people I
| work with aren 't similarly means.
| meghaditya wrote:
| Distributed was always an alternative. The pandemic just made it
| popular among people who never tried it before. These kinds of
| arguments in favor of office culture seem like a reflex action
| resisting any change.
| tazjin wrote:
| Some people also just like interacting with other people, no
| "reflex action" about it.
| mvanbaak wrote:
| things like starbucks or wework or whatever shared office
| space rentable by the hour are a better solution for this
| then big office spaces that stay empty most of the time.
| taeric wrote:
| I expected this to be about system design, not team design.
|
| I question really only the last claim. Integrated doesn't beat
| distributed every time. Rather, spending money/effort beats
| hoping for the best. Every time.
|
| To that end, if we will see this work, we will see ways of
| increasing effort in the area. My gut is that this will be by
| getting more ways of encouraging inefficient encounters. Think of
| it in terms of hits. You can try and ensure your one effort is a
| hit. Or you can do what you can to maximize the effectiveness of
| an effort, while also increasing the number of efforts you make.
| dannyw wrote:
| I like remote work, I like meeting my colleagues in the meatspace
| (irregularly).
|
| Don't force me into the office for a majority of the time, and
| give everyone a travel budget to meet once a quarter.
|
| IMHO this is a great balance, moreso that the "hybrid" of 3 days
| a week.
| angarg12 wrote:
| Everyone's different and unless you account for that we will keep
| talking past each other.
|
| Yesterday I went to the office for the first time in a month. I
| hated it.
|
| First I spent over 1 hour commuting each way, which felt like a
| massive waste of time. We moved to a town out of the city because
| here we could afford a better living space for us without having
| to spend half of our income in rent.
|
| Since I left in a hurry I forgot to take my lunch with me (that I
| cook at home daily), so instead I had to go to a takeaway around
| the corner and spend 25$ for a dubious sandwich and a snack.
| Coffee from the big tub in the lobby is so bad that makes me
| wonder how someone can botch coffee so badly. After lunch I got
| sleepy as sometimes happens, but instead of a powernap like I
| have at home, I had to bumble through my code until I sobered up.
| I ended up getting back home late and exhausted.
|
| Some of the arguments from OP are quite curious, such as the
| number of steps. In my case, rather than spending 2 hours sitting
| in busses, I could spend 1 hour in the gym and 1 hour walking my
| dog, and come up ahead.
|
| By the way, why is bonding with colleagues such a big deal? I had
| to leave my family and lifelong friends behind due to moving to
| another city. What if WFH had been the norm when I started my
| career? Doesn't hanging out with your family and friends count
| for anything?
|
| Again I recognise each person's circumstances are different, but
| after having a taste of remote work (after 12 years of in-the-
| office career) I don't think I'll ever be able to go back.
| bee_rider wrote:
| > By the way, why is bonding with colleagues such a big deal? I
| had to leave my family and lifelong friends behind due to
| moving to another city. What if WFH had been the norm when I
| started my career? Doesn't hanging out with your family and
| friends count for anything?
|
| I think this is for the company? If you have a good rapport
| with your co-workers, I suspect it will be easier to work
| together on problems.
|
| It is of course also possible to do things more formally.
|
| I dunno. I like to keep coworkers at an arms length and not get
| too buddy-buddy, and I prefer to socialize with my non-work
| friends. So I'm not suggesting that people should replace their
| social friends with work friends or something ridiculous like
| that. But the there's plenty of room between best buds and
| total icy formality that for coworkers to exist in, which might
| make it easier to bounce ideas back and forth.
| porcoda wrote:
| > By the way, why is bonding with colleagues such a big deal?
|
| One of the most consistent themes in the "please go back to
| offices" articles is that there is a cohort of people who
| appear to have designed their lives around their job. Their
| social life solely revolves around work. They don't appear to
| actually have social lives that don't involve coworkers. They
| also appear to believe all that matters is optimizing work
| performance.
|
| Not exactly what I'd think would lead to a generally good level
| of well being, but I guess it works for some people.
| gedy wrote:
| > Furthermore, the spontaneous and critically important break-
| outs (small conversations) that happen at team off-sites or
| conferences
|
| I guess I've missed out, but in 20 years in the industry I've
| literally never had any critically important break-outs from
| office or off-sites or hallway conversations.
|
| Important work is intentional, and rarely accidental.
| cvhashim wrote:
| I'd be in the office and would be more willing to accept a hybrid
| model if I worked at Google and got free perks like team
| vacations.
| TxProgrammer wrote:
| COVID caused a revolution guys -lets not lose sight of that just
| because we miss the ritual of the office.
|
| in his post, looks like OP wants the team to have occasional
| meetings and more in-person meetups.. sure I'm fine with that,
| covid permitting. BUT
|
| if a Remote lifestyle allows me to check in code, manage teams
| and be productive while at the same time caring for my family,
| extended family, save commute time, or if I have the means, to
| sit on a beach or in a forest and do my work, why shouldn't we
| prefer that flexible way of working, at the expense of some added
| communication overhead ... why do we need to enforce the ritual
| of the office at all -ie, lets DOWNSIZE the office. make it less
| relevant, sure we cant give it up completely for many
| organizations or projects..
|
| And especially for those of us who work in shitty companies (and
| there are many of us) we know that some workplaces can be like
| this: https://youtu.be/jg047oJf1B4?t=58 -anything that lets
| people work remotely or gets away from the hell of being a wage
| slave should be an option..
| jdrc wrote:
| instead of obsessing over what will be the "new default", it's
| sometimes better to sit back, relax and watch the pieces fall
| where they may , as some of the forces here are irreversible.
| There is always a capacity and will for people to produce work,
| and it will find its way to productive use regardless of whether
| they job is distributed or not. we are still at the beginning of
| this
|
| Incidentally , academics have been used to this distributed mode
| for decades, with conferences purposely organized to provide
| opportunities for meshing mixing and friction.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Personally I was mostly just happy to be getting back into the
| office occasionally because I'm tired of working 3 feet away from
| my bed. I can see work-from-home working really well if you are
| lucky enough to have a big place with an extra office, but for me
| it totally and completely sucked.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I think this is where most of the divide is coming from. Single
| engineers with studio apartments have no interest in working
| from home (at least I don't) because I'm just working alone
| from my box all day, save for the time when I go to the coffee
| shop every day.
|
| My most productive hours are away from home, at the coffee
| shop, even without my relatively nice wfh setup.
|
| Some claim that people who don't like wfh wrap too much of
| their social life around work, but I'd just like to be around
| people while I work rather than sitting in my bedroom alone for
| 8 hours a day. This might change when I find a partner etc but
| I'd really prefer a hybrid environment for now.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I love my partner dearly but
|
| * They get up earlier than me and, by default, would end up
| taking the living room when also working from home. I'm sure
| they would have been receptive to trading off who used which
| room, but trading workspaces is kind of a hassle.
|
| * I don't need to spend every single minute with them.
| paxys wrote:
| Always comes down to the same argument - I need social
| interaction therefore everyone must come to work.
| dudul wrote:
| Always the same "arguments".
|
| Spend time with your real friends instead of your coworkers, get
| out of the house on your own, nobody is forcing you to stay
| inside just because you don't have to go to an office. Work from
| a coworking space, distributed/remote doesn't mean everybody at
| home.
|
| It's crazy to see how unhealthy people's life can be when work is
| the only thing they have.
| yu-carm-kror wrote:
| The points are essentially:
|
| * ski trips and the like build good rapport
|
| * chance encounters with colleagues are valuable
|
| * steps make you healthier
|
| The world is realizing that these are so much easier to solve for
| in remote-first work than it is to solve the problems associated
| to office-first.
| noduerme wrote:
| I will say this about the world, though. (As someone who hasn't
| gone to an office job in 20 years).
|
| * No one builds rapport through zoom meetings.
|
| * People have forgotten how to handle chance encounters, and
| display a lot of signs of social discomfort now when they do
| have them.
|
| * People also stopped taking care of themselves during the
| pandemic, at the same time everyone started working from home.
|
| The world is realizing what offroad warrior freelancers like me
| realized a long time ago, but it takes time to realize it: It's
| actually hard to organize your time and take care of yourself
| in the absence of formal structure. I think it will take 20
| years or so before a majority of people in white collar
| positions really adjust to creating their own work/life balance
| now that it's open to them to choose how to manage their
| geographic place and time. It's actually a lot of
| responsibility, and something a lot of people never asked for.
| _proofs wrote:
| no one builds rapport in zoom meetings?
|
| no one builds rapport in zoom meetings where the company
| strangles the meeting space with an expectation of conduct
| and subject matter*
|
| whole internet communities born around games which rely on
| communication are quite literally filled with (positive)
| remote rapport.
|
| quite a few demographics have had long time remote-friends (i
| personally have had a few, one i practically grew up with
| from ages 9 to 23, and have stayed in contact with) -- never
| met them irl bc logistics are hard.
|
| i just do not understand this notion of not being able to
| build relationships remotely -- it is a fiction.
| gnome_chomsky wrote:
| > * People also stopped taking care of themselves during the
| pandemic, at the same time everyone started working from
| home.
|
| I'm healthier than ever. I bought an exercise bike, have a
| home weight setup and my diet is cleaner. I have several
| coworkers who have done similarly.
| silvestrov wrote:
| _No one builds rapport through zoom meetings_
|
| I disagree. I think rapport is created when you create
| things/solutions that makes sense for the business. You don't
| create rapport by being in same room when things don't make
| sense.
|
| In high school I made rapport with teachers that were good. I
| did not make rapport with bad teachers who pretended to be
| good at their job.
|
| Same as developer: rapport is made with other people who
| strives for clarity in design and communication. No rapport
| is made with people who play people games. Office time versus
| zoom time does not make any difference.
| civilized wrote:
| Yes! I've been remote for many years, more than anyone else
| I know. I learned how to work long before videoconference
| was even an option, and I never turn my camera on. Some
| people have never seen my face live. But they know who I
| am. Because when I come in the room, good questions start
| getting asked, brains turn on, decisions are made, roles
| and accountability are set up.
|
| If you're there to do the work, the other people who are
| there to do the work appreciate the hell out of you. (And
| most of them don't turn their camera on either.)
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I flat out disagree with every single point you make. Not to
| dismiss your own experience, disregard what you are saying,
| or be snide or whatever, but:
|
| 1. I met my new manager (switched jobs) for the first time
| over MS Teams in a personally challenging time; I needed to
| take care of my family the second week after starting a new
| job. I worried a lot over this, which was met with incredible
| kindness and empathy.
|
| 2. I've started several serendipitous, fruitful
| collaborations by expansion of offhanded questions or remarks
| in remote meetings.
|
| 3. My mental and physical health is better than pre pandemic
| because of less commute, more leniency to take a walk or bike
| a bit, lower stress around picking up kids, being able to
| cook my own food instead of relying on (potentially
| unhealthy) cafeteria
| teh_klev wrote:
| > more leniency to take a walk or bike a bit
|
| The company I work for will happily let you do this even
| after already having had your lunch break. As far as
| they're concerned as long as the work gets done they don't
| care that much as to how it gets done.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| People don't realize that walking is a way to think and
| thinking is work as well. Many successful people,
| including Steve Jobs, took long walks during the day. It
| helps the mind focus and untangle all your ideas in your
| head.
| chronofar wrote:
| > It's actually hard to organize your time and take care of
| yourself in the absence of formal structure.
|
| It's not hard, it just takes deliberate action. Learning to
| take said matters into your own hands rather than conforming
| them to what you "have to do" (aka formal structure) is
| something most people would benefit from as early as possible
| in life.
| koide wrote:
| In my experience you can build rapport through video calls.
| For certain not in meetings with groups, but on 1:1s it's
| doable. You have to be conscious about it and put more
| effort. But it's not impossible. In fact, for me it's easier
| because it's not by chance, I can put myself in the right
| mindset to have meaningful conversations rather than bumping
| into random people when solving a problem in my mind.
|
| I do agree it's a lot of responsibility, but life changes
| that way. Horse breeders didn't ask for the Model T and so
| on...
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Funny that you would take this example since personal cars
| (as we know them since the Model T) are likely to become
| restricted to rich people in a few decades...
|
| (Though I doubt horses would come back to replace a
| significant fraction of them.)
| chaostheory wrote:
| > It's actually hard to organize your time and take care of
| yourself in the absence of formal structure.
|
| I have strong doubts that you've been remote for "20 years".
| This is much easier to accomplish working remotely. Outside
| of tech and Silicon Valley, there are still managers who are
| keen to see their their employees warming their seats despite
| the proven effectiveness of the independence of remote work
| teh_klev wrote:
| I'd disagree with all of your points.
|
| > No one builds rapport through zoom meetings.
|
| I joined my present company in 2020 and had no problems
| building a rapport with my fellow workers via Teams.
|
| > People have forgotten how to handle chance encounters, and
| display a lot of signs of social discomfort now when they do
| have them.
|
| I don't see any evidence of this. I have plenty of chance
| encounters and don't feel any less comfortable about them
| compared to pre-lockdown, and neither it seems do the folks
| that are on the other end of those chance encounters.
|
| > People also stopped taking care of themselves during the
| pandemic, at the same time everyone started working from
| home.
|
| People also stopped sitting in cars and trains for hours on
| end commuting to the office and used that time to get some
| exercise. Sure it's anecdotal, but you couldn't buy a bicycle
| around here because demand went through the roof.
|
| > It's actually hard to organize your time and take care of
| yourself in the absence of formal structure.
|
| I've worked remotely almost continuously since 2003 and have
| managed to maintain enough self-discipline to stay organised
| and look after myself (certainly at least as well as if I'd
| had to go to an office for "formal structure").
|
| > something a lot of people never asked for.
|
| I disagree, they were told they couldn't because employers
| have a natural distrust of their staff and "this is the way
| its always been". Working from home is weirdly seen as some
| kind of perk, it's not, it's still work.
|
| Now don't get me wrong, there'll be a bunch of folks who
| either can't work from home and being in the office is their
| thing (or an escape :) ), but there are also plenty of folks
| who can function perfectly well working from home so why not
| facilitate that?
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I may be a bit of a cynic here, but it surely sounds like this
| guy doesn't have any sort of life outside work. "It gets you out
| of the house", "it helps you socialise"?
|
| And all that _after_ having worked in the Chrome codebase, whose
| devs are from all over the world.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| it gets _YOU_ out of the house, it helps _YOU_ socialize..
| don't worry him. In all honesty it sounds like he'd benefit if
| _YOU_ returned back to the office.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| The premise of this article, and in some way a major point to all
| "return to the office" arguments, is nothing more than an
| artifact of the system devised around the inability to work
| remotely. It is a secondary effect. It's not a deliberate benefit
| to working on location, it is just how things are when you have
| to spend all day in a room or building with other people who also
| have to do so. And there are also many non-beneficial secondary
| effects to having to commute to a location.
|
| A technological revolution that changes how we need to do things
| is going to take away some of these secondary effects. But it
| will have it's own. Some of them will be positive and some will
| be negative. But overall we don't do things how we do them
| because we get to lay in beanbag chairs (at the office) or on the
| couch (at home) while working, we do them how we do them because
| they're the most efficient and reasonable way to do them.
| Commuting was once _the most_ efficient way to do information
| work. With worldwide high bandwidth networking this is no longer
| the case, therefore we will stop commuting. Inertia slows this
| but it doesn 't stop it.
| whommmsup wrote:
| _hm?_ Reading 'distributed' as 'decentral' ...thinking about:
| Once there was a time when 'some' try to track 'how informations
| spread' by using protocols... _hu_ sounds off-topic... (-;
| Comevius wrote:
| I hope remote with asynchronous interactions is the future,
| because big cities are increasingly unlivable, and corporate
| culture is often a culture of distraction. Remote is hard to do
| right, but it's worth striving for.
|
| Remote also greatly enhances the talent pool available for
| employers. It reduces cost too. It helps the environment. It's
| the antidote to urbanization. It potentially brings money to
| underdeveloped areas, which helps democracy.
| wrycoder wrote:
| > _big cities are increasingly unlivable_
|
| There's no inherent reason why this should be so. Big cities
| can and do provide a marvelous life experience.
|
| But almost all big cities in the US suffer from total
| mismanagement. IMHO, the greatest immediate goal for the US
| should be to work out how to correct that.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| This is the case outside the US as well. Short term, greed-
| focused strategies cause this mismanagement somewhere down
| the line. Over the top prices, noise pollution, etc. None of
| these need to exist at the rates they do today. Similar
| issues form outside cities when mismanagement occurs, it's
| just harder to notice with fewer people involved.
| kredd wrote:
| > big cities are increasingly unlivable
|
| Almost everyone in my circles are loving big city life while
| working remotely. It depends on your life circumstances, and
| what you enjoy, but let's not generalize that urban lifestyle
| is bad. Meeting new people, enjoying indoor activities, walking
| around and etc. are not dying anytime soon, and rent prices
| show how people are still willing to join in.
| teh_klev wrote:
| I think it kinda depends on your age. When I was in my
| twenties and thirties, and despite being a country lad,
| living in cities was highly desirable and I had a lot of good
| times and made some great long lasting friendships during
| that period.
|
| In my forties I became less enamoured by city life and in my
| fifties, now living in a rural location and working remotely,
| if I never see the inside of a city again then that's fine by
| me.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's interesting that in general everyone on HN loves big
| city living, but then you have a post about city noise and
| it's a thousand posts complaining about urban noise and how
| you can't get away from it.
|
| Of course, the key is that you can have both with the right
| transportation options.
| belligeront wrote:
| Cities aren't loud, cars are. Unfortunately, if you live
| in the states, we've let cars overtake 99.9% of our
| cities. It's not this way everywhere.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
| goostavos wrote:
| While I enjoy Not Just Bikes as a channel, it goes a
| little deep into the "cars are literally the root of
| every problem there has ever been even accounting for the
| period before cars existed."
|
| I live in the city. It's loud af, but general traffic is
| only a small part of it. Essential services like police,
| ambulance, and fire sirens, and trash collection are
| massively loud. Then you've got bars blasting music on
| Fridays. People shouting, laughing, and, in general,
| existing (often till the wee hours of the morning). They
| there's the meth-fueled tweakers shouting obscenities.
| Construction noises. Road work. etc..
|
| Density in general is loud.
| ceras wrote:
| I think you're making a mistaken observation there. It's
| a skewed data set: of course people who like living in
| cities will talk about policies they'd like to see to
| make their cities better, and not complain about ways
| that a suburb or rural community could be better.
|
| I don't live in a suburb so it would be very odd for me
| to complain about a hypothetical suburb I don't live in,
| even though I'd have more complaints if I did live in a
| suburb. Just how HN as a whole talks about making tech
| jobs better (e.g. this remote work thread, which isn't
| relevant to most jobs) far more than it does about other
| jobs: it's just more relevant to the people here, and
| even if they overall like their tech job, they want it to
| be better.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > Of course, the key is that you can have both with the
| right transportation options.
|
| I agree, but even then I'm pretty much done with cities
| and that benefit would be wasted on me :)
| bombcar wrote:
| Agreed, it would be nice for a map search that shows the
| furthest you can get and still be UPS deliverable AND
| have fast internet ...
| kredd wrote:
| Not just age. Depends on the city where you live, how you
| grew up and your priorities. I would say it's harder for
| people that grew up in suburban communities to live their
| 40s/50s in a city. Meanwhile, I know people in their mid-
| life (40-60) that actually moved back from suburban
| lifestyle to NYC downtown life. From my personal
| perspective, even being retired in a city would be better
| than living in a small community where everything you do on
| a daily basis is exactly the same. But again, I understand
| others' perspectives and everyone has different things they
| enjoy in life.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| chaostheory wrote:
| You forgot to mention the huge environmental impact that remote
| first has. Even EVs still pollute the air from tires along with
| micro plastic fragments.
|
| Nothing shows that corporate support for the environment is
| mostly lip service when it comes to lack of support for remote
| work despite the major environmental benefits that it brings.
| dangus wrote:
| I greatly disagree with the idea that big cities are becoming
| "increasingly unlivable."
|
| American cities, especially downtowns, are in the middle of
| doing the exact _opposite_ of becoming unlivable. I 'm not
| talking opinions here, I'm talking about factual changes in the
| context of American history.
|
| American city downtowns started as, essentially, the entire
| city, with a diverse mix of residents, commerce, and industry.
| As the industrialization progressed, those downtowns morphed
| into commercial-only zones as most other uses migrated outward.
| [1]
|
| Residential living was very rare in city centers in America,
| with only slum living left. Since then, however, American
| cities are re-introducing residential life to city centers and
| redesigning them around mixed use and essentially revitalizing
| them. [1]
|
| So this idea that big cities are "increasingly unlivable" is
| more of a cynical opinion rather than a matter of historical
| fact.
|
| Also, in terms of sustainability, cities still win out.
| Suburban and rural development fragments animal habitats and
| uses more land per person. More time and miles are needed in
| your car burning oil to get around. City dwellers who walk and
| take transit are more carbon efficient than suburban and rural
| drivers.
|
| Counter-intuitively, water quality is better in cities where
| more people are connected to a treated municipal water source.
| Sewage is also better managed in cities. [2]
|
| Now, on to what's my actual opinion...regarding asynchronous
| work: it's awesome if you're already at a senior level of
| skill, but to me it seems absolutely horrendous for new
| graduates and junior level employees. It's difficult to do
| "apprenticeship" asynchronously. The idea of a future of
| asynchronous work is also incredibly software-biased. For
| example, when Apple wants their employees back in the office
| there's good reason: they design hardware.
|
| [1] https://placesjournal.org/article/downtown-a-short-
| history-o...
|
| [2] https://www.treehugger.com/environmentally-responsible-
| urban...
| presentation wrote:
| Idk I live in a city that honestly is great to live in (Tokyo),
| run a distributed team comprised of others who all live in big
| cities around the world, and nobody has expressed that they
| feel like cities suck to live in. Different strokes I guess. Or
| maybe it's not that cities suck, but that the cities you've
| been to (cough USA cough) suck.
| mping wrote:
| If you have the budget it's great to live in a nice big city,
| you don't even need a car. Just Uber everywhere, get some
| groceries delivered, put your kids in fancy but expensive
| kindergarten, and buy a nice large house right near that park
| the kids love. Bonus points if the city is walkable or has
| decent public transportation.
|
| If you are starting as an average,non FAANG engineer in an
| expensive city it probably sucks a bit more.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| > If you have the budget it's great to live in a nice big
| city, you don't even need a car. Just Uber everywhere, get
| some groceries delivered, put your kids in fancy but
| expensive kindergarten, and buy a nice large house right
| near that park the kids love. Bonus points if the city is
| walkable or has decent public transportation.
|
| It's kind of distressing to hear someone express "Just Uber
| everywhere" as the ideal template for a car-free lifestyle,
| with walkability and public transportation relegated to
| "bonus points." I live car-free in the metro area outside
| of D.C. and primarily get around by bus and bicycle. I
| suspect that it requires a much lower budget than Ubering
| everywhere and you can live a lot more healthily by doing
| so too.
|
| edit: I'd also like to point out that when you impose such
| a high price tag on all of your spatial displacements, you
| discourage yourself from doing it more. With walking,
| cycling and public transit, you open yourself up to a lot
| more serendipitous and impulsive trips. Today I cycled a
| few minutes to the park and did some work on a picnic table
| because I just felt like I wanted a change of scenery. Then
| I came back an hour later. Doing that with Uber would have
| felt absurd.
| jjav wrote:
| > you don't even need a car. Just Uber everywhere,
|
| So you need a car, just paying for one as a service instead
| of direct ownership.
| Larrikin wrote:
| I'd argue that it's not really a big city if there's a
| constant need to Lyft to your destinations.
|
| Extensive subway system has always been one of the main
| differences of how enjoyable city life actually is in the
| various cities I've lived in. Thinking about a car as just
| a time saving activity versus a necessity (even if it's a
| ride share) is extremely freeing.
| filoleg wrote:
| > I'd argue that it's not really a big city if there's a
| constant need to Lyft to your destinations.
|
| If that is your metric, then there isn't a single big
| city in the US aside from NYC (and, maaaaybe, Chicago).
|
| With all other big cities in the US, you can technically
| get away by using public transport exclusively, but with
| a really giant caveat - your place of living, your place
| of work, and all the other places you would want to visit
| are all, by sheer luck, located near public transport
| routes. There is a non-zero number of people in this
| situation, but it requires a great deal of luck and
| specific choices to be made for that to happen.
|
| To be more specific, I will use Seattle as an example. We
| have a solid lightrail and bus system, and the expansion
| of lightrail has been going great. Public transport
| covers a lot of places and areas one might need or want
| to go to. But it doesn't cover an even larger amount of
| places/areas. I personally know plenty of people here who
| live without cars, and even the most pro-public-transport
| of them resort to Uber/Lyft fairly often. Not as a time-
| saving activity, but out of necessity.
| pards wrote:
| > you don't even need a car. Just Uber everywhere, get some
| groceries delivered
|
| Umm ... Those all require a car, it just might not be
| _your_ car. It doesn't help make cities accessible and
| walkable.
| esrauch wrote:
| I think your costs baseline is underestimating: even
| starting as a FAANG engineer in NYC or SF or you already
| can't buy a "large house next to the park"
| wrycoder wrote:
| Nor should you be able to do that.
| Crabber wrote:
| >Remote also greatly enhances the talent pool available for
| employers. It reduces cost too.
|
| Neither of these things are good for an employee.
|
| A world where none of your coworkers have any shared background
| with you or where you can lose an interview at a local company
| to someone 700 miles away sounds like hell.
| mping wrote:
| My company has employees all around Europe, and in north
| America too. Funny enough, even without the shared
| background, we kinda draw from the same principles and have a
| common understanding on how to behave an operate.
|
| A world where I have to work with what the local market
| offers sounds like russian roulette. I don't want to be
| constrained by where my parents decided to live.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| It's double edges all the way around. "shared background" has
| certainly been the cause of a lot of harm. It's one of those
| things that people want, but which is bad, like "Everything
| be more efficient if everyone would stop wasting time on
| their own different ideas and just did what I want.". There
| are no single simple correct answers.
| Crabber wrote:
| >"shared background" has certainly been the cause of a lot
| of harm
|
| Do you have an example?
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Shared background can be a good thing and can apply to
| good things, but it is also the basis of all
| discrimination, tribalism, prejudice, or even at it's
| most benign, inconsideration or ignorance.
|
| The examples are the rule and it's instead hard to think
| of any exceptions.
| imiric wrote:
| > A world where none of your coworkers have any shared
| background with you
|
| So you're _against_ diversity? Differing backgrounds and
| points of view can only be a good thing. For coworkers, for
| the product, for the company. I know it 's en vogue now, but
| it really is important.
|
| > where you can lose an interview at a local company to
| someone 700 miles away
|
| Hiring is not zero-sum. With the current and likely future
| dev market, there's enough jobs for everyone. Companies
| should consider applicants regardless of location of
| residence, and offer the same compensation as well.
| Crabber wrote:
| I think diversity has been pushed on the workplace because
| it massively opens up the labor supply and allows companies
| to plummet wages. As a native worker of a country it is
| completely against your self-interest to advocate for such
| changes.
|
| All of the pro-diversity platitudes like "diversity is a
| strength" are never justified with data, they're just said
| as truisms you're supposed to blindly believe and repeat.
|
| Why does nobody ever talk about how homogeneity is a
| strength? The comradery you used to have in mining villages
| where all workers had a tightly shared heritage and all
| grew up together was probably the strongest workforce you
| could hope for. But workers with those kinds of strong
| bonds do scary things like forming unions and going on
| strike, we don't want any of that! And that's why Amazon
| tracks lack of workplace diversity as a metric for risk of
| union formation :)
| notreallyserio wrote:
| > The comradery you used to have in mining villages where
| all workers had a tightly shared heritage and all grew up
| together was probably the strongest workforce you could
| hope for.
|
| It was certainly good for the owners of the mines and
| other extractive businesses to have their workers feel
| some sense of loyalty to each other based on where they
| were born. Not so much for the workers themselves that
| had fewer opportunities for growth, nor their families as
| the mines closed and the towns died.
|
| > But workers with those kinds of strong bonds do scary
| things like forming unions and going on strike, we don't
| want any of that!
|
| There are plenty of unions made up of people from all
| sorts of backgrounds. Some of them span states (or are at
| least affiliated with organizations that span states). I
| don't know where you got this idea that there's a
| connection between birthplace and unionization.
| ceras wrote:
| Diversity initiatives in tech have a strong bottoms-up
| component from a subset of employees. "Self interest"
| isn't really the point.
|
| One motivator is societal good and fairness to ensure
| that great opportunities are as equally available as
| possible, and that nobody avoids or leaves the industry
| due to their race or gender.
|
| The other is making sure you have more demographic
| variation that can make a better product for more people.
| A classic example is avoiding gaffs in ML models based on
| skin color. All else equal, the more representative your
| employees are of your target user base, the more likely
| someone is to raise the right questions early. This is
| especially true for consumer tech where engineers are
| part of the process of deciding what gets built, but also
| true in cases like thinking about ML fairness.
| imiric wrote:
| > Why does nobody ever talk about how homogeneity is a
| strength? The comradery you used to have in mining
| villages
|
| As I'm sure you're aware, software development is very
| different from physical labor. For one, it's a creative
| endeavor, where different points of view stemming from
| different backgrounds can only have a positive effect on
| the end product.
|
| Think of it in terms of code reviews. Does the product
| benefit more from being reviewed by teammates from the
| same schools and employment backgrounds, or by ones with
| different life and professional experiences? I can't
| point to any studies to prove this, but from personal
| experience I'd argue it's the latter.
|
| Besides, getting to know people from different
| backgrounds and cultures can only expand your own view
| points and make you a better developer and person.
|
| Your point about companies pushing diversity to prevent
| unions sounds conspiratorial at best. Strong bonds can
| and do form regardless of culture.
| Crabber wrote:
| >For one, it's a creative endeavor, where different
| points of view stemming from different backgrounds can
| only have a positive effect on the end product.
|
| I'd say it's far more engineering than creative. You're
| writing code to meet the specifications of a client. I
| don't think the race of the person writing that code
| makes a difference.
|
| >Does the product benefit more from being reviewed by
| teammates from the same schools and employment
| backgrounds, or by ones with different life and
| professional experiences
|
| It benefits from being reviewed by people who have lots
| of experience writing different types of software. Which
| has nothing to do with ethnic diversity.
|
| >Besides, getting to know people from different
| backgrounds and cultures can only expand your own view
| points and make you a better developer
|
| Meaningless platitude, unless you can back this up with
| data
|
| >Your point about companies pushing diversity to prevent
| unions sounds conspiratorial at best.
|
| https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61403
| imiric wrote:
| > https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61403
|
| I stand corrected. Corporations gonna corporate /shrug
|
| However I disagree with the conclusion:
|
| > It appears it's nothing more than a union busting
| tactic to divide and conquer their own workforce so
| they'll be easier to control and accept lower wages.
|
| Quite the sensationalist take. Again, I don't have data
| to back this up, but IME a diverse team produces better
| results and I'd rather work in one than not.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Does the product benefit more from being reviewed by
| teammates from the same schools and employment
| backgrounds, or by ones with different life and
| professional experiences?
|
| In practice "diversity" is more often people from the
| same schools and employment backgrounds, with just a bit
| more variation in sex or race or ethnicity.
| omginternets wrote:
| >So you're against diversity?
|
| This really isn't the same "diversity" as "integrating
| marginalized communities", though.
|
| So yes, I am against the particular kind of diversity that
| prefers hiring a wealthy brahman living in India over the
| inner-city kid who needs a leg up.
|
| I'm also opposed to the kind of "diversity" that puts a
| substantial portion of our domestic workforce out of a job.
|
| Neither of these is what "diversity" used to mean; the term
| is being coopted by those who would benefit from lowering
| working wages.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| >Differing backgrounds and points of view can only be a
| good thing.
|
| I assure you, diversity that would actually impact
| production in some big way is not the diversity being hired
| for. Just look at how many psychological tests emphasize a
| variety of personalities, meanwhile hiring tries to find
| the same car with a different paint job.
| eddieroger wrote:
| > lose an interview at a local company to someone 700 miles
| away sounds like hell
|
| I'd feel pretty terrible about my ability if one of the best
| things about me was proximity to a building. I live in the
| midwest and I like it in the midwest, and I'm quite happy
| with a ~future~ present where I'm competing with people
| around the world for a job I want and not stuck to the one of
| the 10 or so places I could do my kind of work here.
| Crabber wrote:
| What a toxic mindset.
|
| _You_ might be in the top 1%, but 99% of people aren 't.
| Not everyone is able to compete globally against 3 billion
| other people. Most people are unexceptional and average.
| And that's okay. Those are the workers keep the world
| moving forward.
|
| It is perfectly okay to just be the best person at
| something in your town or local area. Telling people "you
| should feel pretty terrible about your ability if you
| aren't one of the best people in the world" is telling
| 99.99% of the population they should feel forever
| worthless.
| practice9 wrote:
| Celebrating mediocrity while being privileged enough to
| make lots of $$$ is the definition of toxic mindset.
|
| IMO, if a person somewhere in the world is better
| qualified for the job than me - it's ok. They worked hard
| to get where they are and their work should be
| compensated fairly.
| _proofs wrote:
| > Telling people "you should feel pretty terrible about
| your ability if you aren't one of the best people in the
| world" is telling 99.99% of the population they should
| feel forever worthless.
|
| but he did not say this at all. not even literally.
|
| you merely think he implied it, which is still a leap,
| since all this person described to you was how they
| personally internalize their work.
|
| your disdain for competition makes it harder to read.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| You're not competing against the best of the best for
| every single job. Only 1% of people are in the 1%, and
| they'll largely be employed in high-wage, high-visibility
| positions at high-budget employers. In an idealized
| global market you'd be competing against other people for
| jobs with desirability commensurate with your own
| ability.
|
| It's true that if in an absolute sense you're in the
| bottom rung of the labor pool then a global market will
| be more likely to sort you into a job with low
| desirability. I sympathize; I'm from Cincinnati, and if
| my employer were in the Bay Area (and paying Bay Area
| wages) it would have been harder for me to get a job
| there. But I'm not _that_ sympathetic, because a global
| market means someone with a better fit but no local
| options _can_ find a job. It means that if the market for
| data scientists in Cincinnati dries up I still have a
| chance.
| [deleted]
| civilized wrote:
| > corporate culture is often a culture of distraction
|
| My job is to somehow be productive despite the best efforts of
| management to interfere. Being remote has greatly helped that.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > It's the antidote to urbanization
|
| Unclear that's a particularly worthy goal. I enjoy the rural
| life as much as anyone, but it's hard to argue that a "liveable
| city" (dense, planned, walkable/bikeable, work near to where
| you live, etc) isn't a more efficient use of society's
| resources than the automobile-centric suburban sprawl that much
| of the US is subjected to.
| cudgy wrote:
| But remote work cuts down the amount of driving especially
| during the same times of the day when everyone is rushing to
| their 9 to 5 offices.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| As a sibling already mentioned, one does not preclude the
| other. I don't know why the US does it the way it does it and
| other countries seem to strive for it too nowadays, even the
| ones that have done it properly so far.
|
| Especially in the US I don't see an issue with both building
| out and being walkable or livable without cars. One just has
| to plan it properly. There are tons of medium sized cities
| around the world that get some of it right already, possibly
| by accident. I don't think we need to go Tokyo style or New
| York style density with millions upon millions of people
| being crammed into skypscrapers and every inch of soil
| covered in asphalt or concrete. Sure there's Central Park but
| not much more and it's so full of people it's unbelievable.
| So many people all crammed into one space generates so many
| issues that otherwise don't exist.
|
| I think lots of medium sized cities, say 150-500k, can easily
| provide enough public transport to make it liveable, provide
| enough green space to make it liveable and provide city
| centers with lots of concrete and asphalt for those that want
| that to make it completely walkable. Before you say that its
| impossible, I have lived in such cities and they work just
| fine. In my younger years I lived in such a downtown and
| everything was within walking distance. Work, groceries, pubs
| even stores. And it was absolutely safe to walk all over
| downtown, half drunk in the middle of the night to get from
| one pub to the next or home. Sure, to go to IKEA I had to
| take a car and drive to the outskirts of the next city of
| similar size. But how often do I go to IKEA? Once, when I
| moved in. The a bit older me had to then make a choice of
| moving to a particular side of town to be close enough to the
| office and such. With remote work it wouldn't matter. I
| could've stayed where I was. Get to the city center? 15
| minute train ride after walking 5 minutes to the train.
| Comevius wrote:
| The middle and lower class is quickly outpriced of that
| liveable city or state experience. It would be better to
| spread our resources to more areas, instead of concentrating
| it to a few. We already know what wealth concentration,
| inequality looks like.
|
| When you give all opportunities to a few, they don't tend to
| use it to everyone's benefit. People who are robbed of the
| consequences of their actions tend to lose sight of reality.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| > The middle and lower class is quickly outpriced of that
| liveable city or state experience. It would be better to
| spread our resources to more areas, instead of
| concentrating it to a few. We already know what wealth
| concentration, inequality looks like.
|
| That's not because livable places with amenities located
| within walking distance are expensive to build or maintain.
| It's because _there aren 't enough of them_, primarily
| because in very large tracts of every metropolitan area
| they are illegal to build under current zoning ordinances.
| That's how you get cute prewar streetcar suburbs that are
| ludicrously unaffordable - the neighborhoods were cheap to
| build at the time and could be cheap to build today, the
| prices are all because people love living there and we made
| it illegal to build more.
|
| Postwar suburban sprawl is monstrously expensive to build
| and maintain. You need to build and maintain an incredible
| amount more infrastructure per person, and because the
| properties themselves are less livable and car-dependent,
| fewer people want to and can afford to live there, which
| makes them "cheaper."
|
| The answer is not to force people to live in car dependent
| sprawl. It's to build more walkable places so that the cost
| comes down.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Less dense towns can still be walkable and have culture and
| amenities. It does require a different kind of planning.
| jimbokun wrote:
| I grew up in one. Very sad they have largely disappeared.
| chaostheory wrote:
| _"While it's certainly possible to boot up Among Us during work
| or schedule Zoom lunches between random teammates, the set of
| remote bonding activities is significantly more limited than the
| set of in-person bonding activities."_
|
| I'd like to see this revisited once VR / AR is more mature.
| Apple's and Meta's new headsets are just around the corner.
| jlbbellefeuille wrote:
| There is a disinformation campaign against remote work. The
| likely culprit behind it are commercial real estate interests and
| good old fashioned corporate leaders with their head buried in
| the sand.
|
| Ed Zitron's Substack has been following and reporting on the
| remote work propaganda machine for over a year.
|
| https://ez.substack.com/archive?sort=top
| michaelsalim wrote:
| agentultra wrote:
| I'm happy as a bug with being fully remote. I'm glad there are
| more companies considering fully distributed teams and I hope the
| trend continues.
|
| If there's some future where we can mix things up and work in
| person some times that would be fine. I used to have an office in
| a co-working space I used just to get out of the house. It was
| nice seeing the regular, every-day familiar strangers along the
| way, get a coffee from the usual place, etc.
|
| ... but my team was still located all around the world and the
| office was within walking distance of my house.
|
| I don't particularly enjoy commuting, the dour glow of
| fluorescent lights, the desks lined up in rows, or working in a
| concrete coffin.
|
| I like being able to go for a walk in my neighbourhood in the
| afternoon or spend a bit of time in my garden. I enjoy being
| surrounded by my books. I like it when my cat snuggles in my lap.
| I like having no commute.
|
| Some people like after-work happy hours and "team building." Not
| me. I like to get my job done and go home to my family, friends,
| and neighbours.
|
| I also think productivity-wise it brings a lot of benefits. The
| best collaboration happens with people write things down and
| share them widely. That is often hindered in an office setting
| where hallway chats and random encounters ensure that the people
| engaged in those activities control what gets shared and with
| whom; great for politics but useless for work.
|
| I get the creativity side of it: ideas aren't born in a vacuum.
| For media work like music it's way harder to work remotely. But I
| don't think ideas are born solely in offices either. Great ideas
| come from people collaborating and sharing. This happens _more_
| in a distributed team because fewer people are left out of the
| process. It 's way easier in a software engineering team. There's
| literally no evidence that offices contribute to anything other
| than needless CO2 emissions and traffic.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Add to your list
|
| "I don't enjoy the guy in the cube next to me that must be hard
| of hearing and yells into his headset at 85 decibels"
|
| What's worse is sometimes I'm that guy.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| Haha, yep. I don't want to hear other people and don't want
| them to have to hear me.
| agentultra wrote:
| I do prefer the hum of case fans and the sound of my Model M.
|
| Having a choice over ones environment is a huge win for
| someone like me though that has sensory sensitivities most
| folks don't seem to have problems with.
| pyjarrett wrote:
| I'm a super introvert who works remote. I don't want the company
| to spend a bunch of money on a ski trip for the company, I want
| to see my portion of that money in my pocket so I can do what I
| enjoy.
|
| Working from home means my employer gets more productivity, since
| I can handle "life" things easier without having to run home.
| They save money on office space, in-office meals, chairs, desks,
| and such, and I get more autonomy on my personal setup and how I
| want to work. It also means that people can move due to life
| reasons such as to be closer to an elderly family member, and
| still stay working for the same employer.
|
| I could get steps from walking around town, or, I can walk my dog
| while I'm waiting on a build or at lunchtime. My kid is home a
| couple days this week because of break for the upcoming holiday,
| so she gets to go with me and the dog on our morning walk, and I
| don't need to worry about child care.
|
| I like the people I work with, and have built rapport with them
| over years of working together on difficult problems. We connect
| based on our professional mutual work, but we each have our own
| interests and families.
|
| Remote work emphasizes this professional connection and broadens
| your ability to work with more varying people due to the limited
| and directed nature of the communications and interactions. You
| don't need to worry about the person in the next cubicle loudly
| talking on the phone or eating potato chips or burning popcorn in
| the microwave. It makes it easier to focus on positive
| interactions and tune out the bad ones. If I don't want to hear
| all the sports talk, I'm not in the #sports slack channel.
|
| Yes, I could operate in an office environment, a lot will
| probably return to it. However, I've been fully remote for years,
| and it'd be a hard sell for me to go back.
| cma wrote:
| > I don't want the company to spend a bunch of money on a ski
| trip for the company, I want to see my portion of that money in
| my pocket so I can do what I enjoy.
|
| Your portion would be taxed, they can offer this avoiding 40%
| taxes on it or whatever it would work out to at your marginal
| rate. You may still not want it, but the alternative isn't
| getting the same money.
| sdoering wrote:
| I'd rather have this as taxed bonus income than as a ski
| trip. Bei g crowded in with all my coworkers (whom I actually
| like by the way) still doesn't sound like a perk to me. And I
| like skiing. Or at least snowboarding.
|
| I still wouldn't see it as a perk to spend a few days
| together with the people with whom I work. I like working
| with them. I really do. But I also really like to do what I
| want when I am not on the clock.
|
| And that would be so worth the tax cut. At least in my
| personal opinion.
| glacials wrote:
| The point here is that the ski trip is not a perk, but an
| investment in company productivity via social lubrication.
| The company believes it is getting more for its money by
| sending the team on a ski trip, than it would depositing
| those same dollars into people's bank accounts (even
| ignoring taxes).
|
| I have been remote for six years and I love it, but still
| some of the biggest leaps forward in trust and
| communication I get with people happen when I spend time
| with them in person; and some of the most fruitful products
| and tech I've been involved in conceiving weren't in a
| meeting set up to conceive them, but accidentally, while
| having a drink and being in the same room as someone I
| didn't plan to be with.
|
| Everyone is different and I'm not saying you should be
| forced to do any of this. I recognize that often these
| situations are just painful, depending on who you are and
| who your team is. Just saying the dollars have a specific
| purpose when being spent in this way.
| zeptonaut22 wrote:
| I'm the author of the post and just want to say: I think it's
| awesome that you work at a remote company and am glad that you
| found a role that fits your personality. It sounds like you're
| happier there and I'm glad that the option exists.
|
| I think that the fact that there's more variety now in whether
| you can work remotely or in an office is awesome, and I hope
| that's not going away. (And don't think it will.) And no job
| should ever give you hell for staying home one or two days per
| week if your job is totally doable at home.
|
| With that being said, there are a lot of people in the world
| that genuinely enjoy having in-person interactions with their
| colleagues every day and I'm one of them. I've been lucky
| enough to work in jobs with awesome colleagues and I don't
| _want_ to be put up digital barriers between me and them. I
| also like the fact that I have some forcing function for
| getting more than 2,000 steps a day.
|
| The main thing that I'm worried about is that companies are
| going to see dollar signs in remote work because they can cut
| office space expenses, only for employees to not be able to
| backtrack.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| I enjoy the in-person interactions in the office, and I'll
| even argue that there's benefits and desirability to it, and
| office work and centralisation.
|
| But my wife has worked at a company that did offsite kinda
| vacation/camp things, and gotta say, it ranks up pretty high
| there on the corporate dystopia cringe scale for us.
|
| I work at a semi distributed organisation atm (several
| offices in different cities) and we generally used to have
| once a year offsite. while it was nice to see some faces in
| person, the experience of leaving my family to do so, and to
| have to go to locations and accommodation chosen by work, was
| again just a downer. I know other people looked forward to
| it, so horses for courses, but I also know there were people
| working long hours and liking the travel because they had
| nothing else going on in their lives.
|
| I think the strengths of centralisation stand independent a
| lot of these practices, that make a lot of us shudder on some
| level.
| laerus wrote:
| Well i hope it is. I can't stand commuting or the noisy and
| distracting office environment. Being close to my family is way
| more important than being close to coworkers. I'm also way more
| productive at home, I can wear what i want, I can speak out loud
| to myself, listen to metal, take a walk, use my clean bathroom
| and the list goes on. Overall it's healthier and more ecologic.
| It's just doesn't compare and any argument I've heard/read
| against 100% remote work just doesn't matter to me. I also don't
| care about small talk with coworkers or any kind of non-
| professional bonding, I have friends for that.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| You can have the best of both worlds where you WFH and also
| your company pays for you to come out once every 3 months for a
| week or so.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I haven't gone to an offsite meeting with my coworkers yet
| (we're 100% remote) so I don't really know what to expect of
| them. I do know that when I worked in offices there was a lot
| of bullshit going on every day that only happened because the
| barrier to interruption was lower. What goes on at these
| offsite meetings that makes them worthwhile?
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| I usually just expect to drink booze and shoot the shit
| with my team. There are usually team building activities
| arranged by HR, that is another way get to know your
| teammates. In my opinion, getting a little inebriated is
| the fastest way to bond with your team.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This is exactly what I do right now and it's pretty nice. We
| have quarterly planning weeks and everyone goes on-site for
| that, but otherwise, we're split around the country and there
| is only one office in downtown San Antonio. 70% of the people
| working on this program don't live in San Antonio, so there
| is no practical way to undo being a distributed workforce.
| But it's a military program and the military is pretty used
| to working in a distributed manner. They need to be able to
| work in theaters of combat where you're not only spread out
| and constantly on the move, but any node in your worker
| network can go offline at any time, possibly permanently.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Other than listening to metal (I'm more into a mix of punk and
| classical), I could've written this comment. When I commuted
| into work it took maybe 40 minutes from front door to desk in
| the morning; the reverse trip often took an hour and a half. It
| was absolutely killer. I'd rather be getting painful dental
| work done than sit in traffic for an hour with nothing but a
| podcast to distract me.
|
| Now that my company has returned to work with a "hybrid" plan
| (2 days in the office, 3 days out), I'm glad that they've been
| flexible in allowing me to be fully remote despite being local.
| My dogs would be the saddest pups stuck in crates without me.
| UglyToad wrote:
| Agree with you. I'm highly skeptical of an argument from a
| (X?)googler about why remote is bad.
|
| Like sure it might be nice to go to Google's office instead of
| work from the kitchen table but that's not what's on the table
| for 99.999% of developers. It's some open-plan dead air noisy
| hell.
| galoisscobi wrote:
| Having worked at Google previously, I completely agree with
| this assessment.
|
| I love remote work, mostly because actual work environment
| feels hostile towards ICs but if I had a Google like
| environment again, I'd have no problems going back to office.
| bombcar wrote:
| From what I've heard Google campus is very like a college
| campus - and if they provided dorms many of the younger
| employees would love it. And it would have been amazing in my
| college years.
|
| Not so much these days
| golergka wrote:
| This still limits your hiring pool to one particular city and one
| particular country.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| I don't really understand why (relatively) over paid US
| Software Engineers are so keen on remote work. The inevitable
| conclusion is the rapid decrease in salary paid.
| golergka wrote:
| I don't live in US and never have, but I now work there
| remotely.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Its pretty nice not having to move every time you switch
| jobs, nor be forced to only look at companies within a small
| region around you.
|
| If remote work leads to more efficient job markets, I'm not
| going to complain just because the efficiency doesn't benefit
| me.
| KronisLV wrote:
| I actually wrote about the remote vs in-office culture a while
| ago, in my blog article "Remote working and the elephant in the
| room": https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/remote-working-and-the-
| elep...
|
| In short, i do not believe that having an office-centric culture
| is a bad thing, nor that a remote culture is a bad thing either.
| It's just that there are people who will always lean towards one
| or the other and that's where the incompatibilities begin.
|
| Personally, i'd want a 100% remote position and doubt that i'll
| be going back to spending my time commuting just to sit in an
| office. For others, the opposite applies - they might not be able
| to wait for being able to properly return to offices soon enough.
| Each of us might have our own valid (at least subjectively)
| arguments for pursuing these approaches. Hell, with slightly
| different life circumstances i might change my opinions (e.g.
| having kids around the house) or vice versa (wanting to travel
| more or move and not be bogged down).
|
| It is when the guilt tripping and peer pressuring as well as
| brainwashing starts, with every team/company/culture advocating
| for their own "normal" as the only proper way to work that the
| problems start appearing. Everything from virtuous articles in
| favor of a particular approach or against another, to trying to
| gaslight or convince those easily swayed to conform to whatever
| they want.
|
| That, in my eyes, is disingenuous and there will definitely be a
| lot of people looking for different jobs in the coming years, the
| so called "Great Resignation" (albeit there are also other
| factors to this, especially in other industries), after it became
| apparent that people can switch jobs without always relocating,
| something that's taken advantage of by many.
|
| But what's the end result of this? Plenty of people quitting and
| taking the domain knowledge with themselves, which will make
| things worse for others in the short term and long term - but
| that's usually just a case of documentation/knowledge
| transfer/bus factor being bad. I do hope that the current
| circumstances allow more people to find jobs that are suitable
| for them, whatever those jobs may be.
| kkfx wrote:
| It's a bit more complex: being a team means being a community and
| since we are not (sigh [1]) Borg but still being social animals
| we need a certain physical interaction BUT we do need that for
| certain aspects, while we can avoid that for certain others. For
| instance a remote university is horrific, students and teachers
| need to be physically together at least for the majority of the
| time, a research team need to be together equally BUT a company
| that do not do much research once formed a team with a bit of
| punctual and casual physical interaction like few events per year
| do not need much the social part, individuals do have their local
| sociability separated from the work and while it's a change of
| culture and model can work well if well done and tested a bit.
|
| Actual issues came mostly IMO because of:
|
| - lack of real distributed org and practice
|
| - bad policies and tools
|
| - the sense of being in a short transitory phase so no one really
| need to invest in such work form
|
| In the end transports are and was for the entire human history
| the most expensive thing we need, if we can have many advantages
| of being together without the transport and physical presence
| need that's so good we need to work around issues as much as
| possible.
|
| [1] before the horrendous idea of a Borg's queen of course,
| because the Borg represent a PERFECT society despite the light
| S.T. draw on them, a fully integrated and egalitarian society
| where individual are really peers, all decisions are made in a
| pure Democracy and they can even makes memories of any individual
| survive in the community
| ekanes wrote:
| It seems healthiest for companies and people to choose: have all-
| remote or all-in-person. It's the muddled hybrid model that's the
| worst of all worlds.
| eddieroger wrote:
| You were right with the first part alone - let the teams
| choose. Hybrid worked for me and my team pre-pandemic, where we
| had no emphasis on location at all, so some people worked
| remotely full time, and the rest were free to come in to the
| office at their discretion. We would get together periodically
| (and deliberately), but outside of a few times a year, there
| was no emphasis on location at all. Most days, you wouldn't
| know who was in the office or not until the cams came on during
| standup.
| boise wrote:
| Amen!
| heurisko wrote:
| I worked hybrid before the pandemic.
|
| It was the best of both worlds. 3/5 days at the office was
| great.
|
| It gave the benefit of socialising and collaboration, with the
| flexibility of being at home for visiting home contractors,
| bulk deliveries, or somewhere where you could take a deep dive
| into something with no interruptions.
| tonfa wrote:
| I guess parent meant hybrid where part of the team is full
| remote and part of the team is in office.
| ekanes wrote:
| Yes. I should have been clearer.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| > I found that having experiences with coworkers from outside of
| a work settings would significantly strengthen the relationship
| with those coworkers.
|
| Why can't work just be work? Do you really want to spent time
| with your coworkers outside of work? Some of us have families to
| care for. And some of us have actual friends that we like to
| hangout with. Coworkers aren't my buddies or family. We are a
| team to get things done for a price.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| >Some of us have families to care for. And some of us have
| actual friends that we like to hangout with.
|
| ???
| imiric wrote:
| I agree. For me it's not required to know someone personally to
| be professional, establish trust, and have a great working
| relationship. If a friendship arises naturally, then great, but
| I also dislike the forced team building events (or after hour
| hangouts) companies think are essential for a team to work well
| together.
|
| And yet I've learned that not everyone is like this, especially
| nowadays with remote work growing in popularity. Some people do
| feel that a personal connection helps in a professional
| setting. So I tend to begrudgingly accept this and make an
| effort to do this for the team.
| ryathal wrote:
| you spend about 50% of waking hours with co-workers, it doesn't
| make sense to me that you would want to ignore them. The
| majority of my friends are former/current co-workers.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nowherebeen wrote:
| If I am spending 50% of my waking hours with them, how
| exactly am I ignoring them? You can still make friends at
| work without having to hang out after work. I shouldn't be
| obliged to spent 75% of my waking hours with them.
|
| And how do you know they don't want the same thing? I know
| tons of people that would rather spent time with their loved
| ones than their coworkers. You might want to rethink your
| definition of ignore, because it sounds very much like
| unhealthy peer pressure.
| rockbruno wrote:
| I'm happy this is the case for you, but this is not everyone's
| reality. If you have no friends and family post-college,
| socializing during work is the only thing preventing you from
| going into deep depression.
|
| Very common example of how this can happen: Moving to another
| country for work.
| lupire wrote:
| And those souls absolutely should congregate at work while
| they try to plant roots. But don't force the whole company to
| do it.
| rockbruno wrote:
| I agree with you. I was just adding that people who are
| strongly against non-remote work should at least be aware
| that this can literally kill people, meaning that companies
| should not yolo the decision of how it should operate in
| this regard.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| I am not strongly against non-remote work. I am strongly
| against having to hang out with your coworkers after
| work. I think those two are different things.
|
| We already spent enough time at work, I should be allowed
| my own free time to relax without feeling the peer
| pressure to be part of the team outside work hours.
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| I think it's a generational thing.
|
| As a young person, work is basically the default way to meet
| people after moving to a large city. I have real friends
| outside work now but they all started as colleagues or friends
| of colleagues. I'd also prefer to work with people I can trust
| over anonymous colleagues any day.
|
| I'm not saying it's the only way (it's probably not _good_ or
| healthy) but this sentiment is super common among my peers.
| When we 're older I suspect that will change.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| > However, even the fiercest distributed team advocates agree
| that an office provides some benefits that are difficult to
| replicate on a distributed team. I want to dig into some of those
| benefits.
|
| Or, how to say you don't read hacker news without saying you
| don't read hacker news.
|
| I don't disagree that offices have their benefit, but I do know
| where to find internet pundits who do!
| higeorge13 wrote:
| I hope distributed is the new norm in order to get similar
| salaries despite the fact we were born or chose to live in
| different continents.
| [deleted]
| gregdoesit wrote:
| I know two startups started both in 2020. They started out with
| roughly on the same idea, having raised similar funding.
|
| Startup #1 decided to do full-remote from day one. After a year,
| the founder of the full-remote startup had little progress: they
| ended up figuring out how to work, had to fire people "not cut
| out" for remote work, and then realized they really make
| meaningful progress after week-long retreats as a team which they
| now do on an adhoc basis.
|
| Startup #2 stayed in-office even during the pandemic in the same
| location - following local guidelines on COVID rules as with all
| businesses. They did this because this was the way the founders
| knew how to work, and they knew that full-remote would be a steep
| learning curve and slow down their iteration speed as they are
| rushing to find product-market-fit. They only hired for onsite
| 2-3 days a week, and paid very well in return.
|
| Startup #2 found PMF in year 1, and now are at ~30 people, ~100
| paying businesses, growing strong, ready for their Series A. They
| have engineering, product, sales and customer support in the same
| office. As this startup grows, they are putting remote-friendly
| policies in place as they realize they'll have a hard time hiring
| and retaining without. But their core culture is collaborating
| frequently as in-person.
|
| Startup #1 is looking for PMF and are still learning how to work
| efficiently as a full-remote team. In this sense, they are well
| ahead of Startup #2. In product progress, they are behind. For
| runway, they are about the same, as Startup #1 runs with a
| smaller team than #2.
|
| In my social media feed, almost everyone advocates for full-
| remote work, as from a personal point of view this is the
| preference of most people. No commute, more flexible work hours
| and choosing where to live and where to work from are all
| undoubtedly huge benefits for any individual.
|
| Still, my observation is that working full-remote or full-
| distributed has a learning path that takes time and effort. There
| are people, managers and teams are not there just yet. And we
| might learn that certain team phases, team dynamics and business
| environments are better fitted for full-remote or fully
| distributed versus one that has more "in-office" contact.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| My takeaway from that is very early startups should be in
| person, but beyond that very early stage remote will make sense
| especially as devs can be picky and want to work remote.
| [deleted]
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| Yes, In Person is always better where there is more "chaos",
| but for established companies where most people have "tasks"
| to do, remote works just fine.
| koide wrote:
| And mine is that you can't tell much from that anecdote. The
| failing startup might be failing for any number of reasons.
| There are counterpoints of fully remote startups that have
| worked out well. So basically, it's just noise. There isn't
| even an attempt made at explaining why is working remotely
| the problem, they might not be suited to it, or that they
| tried before being ready for it as OP stated.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| If we've learned anything from reading HN, a sample of two
| isn't statistically significant, especially when talking about
| startups. I've known people in several startups and very few
| cashed out - and they were all in office.
|
| It's interesting that you state that Startup #2 paid very well
| _in return_ for coming into the office. I get paid very well
| for _doing my job_ , regardless of whether it is remote or in
| office. If Startup #1 has decided that remote means they don't
| need to pay very well, then that is probably your root cause.
| lozenge wrote:
| How many COVID infections were caused by startup 2 breaking the
| law?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > Startup #2 stayed in-office even during the pandemic in the
| same location - following local guidelines on COVID rules as
| with all businesses.
| xtracto wrote:
| Ha! This happened in the startup where I worked in 2020: CEO
| was stubborn to work in the office so he implemented "all
| official guidelines " to keep some people in the office.
| There were 2 COVID outbreaks in the 10 months I worked there
| during the pandemic (I refused to go to the office). I later
| found a better paying fully remote job with sensible
| leadership .
| [deleted]
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| > At Google Chicago, we had a yearly two day team ski trip
|
| So get the remote team together for a two day team ski trip. With
| all the money you save on office rent, get the while team
| together for a whole week of skiing.
|
| > Furthermore, the spontaneous and critically important break-
| outs (small conversations) that happen at team off-sites or
| conferences are near impossible to replicate over any remote tool
| I've used
|
| True, but again, remote teams can also go to conferences and have
| off sites.
|
| > Even if they do, once budgets get stressed, it seems likely
| this will be the first "perk" to go: its benefits are hard to
| quantify and it certainly seems frivolous to the short-sighted
|
| Maybe so, but team ski trips, conferences and offsite will also
| be on the chopping block. And the budget is much more likely to
| get stressed when you have the huge fixed cost of downtown office
| space in it.
|
| This seems not so much as an argument for office vs remote work
| but an argument that pandemics are bad. I think a lot of people
| who didn't work remote before the pandemic have the wrong
| impression about what working remotely is actually like.
| lumost wrote:
| Anecdotally it seems much more difficult to get an offsite
| together in the modern remote office than it was in the old
| offices. With the new remote world, senior leadership struggles
| to stay in touch with the general feeling of workers. While
| this surely results in fewer time wasting pep talks, it also
| means that the worthwhile activities are also getting side
| lined.
| bfung wrote:
| > With the new remote world, senior leadership struggles to
| stay in touch with the general feeling of workers.
|
| I'd say that is more of a sign of poor management chain
| management, communication, and people management. Senior mgmt
| can stay in touch by, surprise, staying in touch. Remote
| makes it harder for those poor at written skills and tech
| skills, but a good manager should've been writing things down
| to begin with.
|
| Opinions from someone doing mgmt for quite some time now.
| noasaservice wrote:
| And that's a MAJOR contingent of people against remotework.
|
| Most middle and upper management can't do it. They fail.
| They're impediments. They're also the ones who want glass
| "fishbowls" to show off their employees' toil, AND to
| "supervise" professionals for the lack of appearance of
| work.
|
| In reality, companies would do themselves a LOT of cost-
| cutting to getting rid of ineffectual managers who get in
| the way of process and progress. But then again, its that
| class of workers is why we're dealing with anti-remotework
| all the time.
| bfung wrote:
| > Most middle and upper management can't do it. They
| fail.
|
| Yep, your post is 100% correct :) That's the reality we
| live in.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| You can't get rid of the C-suites' safety layer. Middle
| management exists to take the fall when the C-suite makes
| major mistakes. The sociopaths at the top won't even
| consider it.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Only a few need to consider and do this. And once they
| do, the others will be forced to do similar to compete.
| pc86 wrote:
| What about it is more difficult? The (admittedly few) off-
| sites I've been to have been scheduled 6+ months in advance
| and the general expectation is that everyone is going unless
| there's a wedding or a kid is sick or something, in the sense
| that it's not really culturally acceptable to take PTO during
| that time unless it's for something very important. When the
| VP or CTO comes around in February and says "we're going to
| $CITY for a week, all expenses paid, in September" it's
| pretty easy for all the teams to get around that.
| bitL wrote:
| The last thing I want is to spend extra time with my coworkers.
| Intense work interaction is enough, I strongly prefer to meet
| "outsiders" in my spare time to actually be able to relax
| efficiently. Thanks but no thanks.
| charles_f wrote:
| Yep, I'm _ok_ with the occasional "event", restaurant and
| such ; but I don't want work to socially pressure me into a
| small holiday with my colleagues. My time off I want to spend
| with friends and family, not drinking corporate coolade.
| goostavos wrote:
| >The last thing I want is to spend extra time with my
| coworkers.
|
| That seem to be a common point that divides the WFH vs office
| people. For some, it's really wild how much they rely on the
| office, and the people that are only there because they're
| getting paid to be, to act as a stand in for friends, family,
| or fulfillment of general social need (plus, in OP's case,
| the office lets him get his steps in each day(!) which is a
| topic he surely strikes up a long, tedious conversation about
| with his coworkers as they're held captive at their desk).
|
| Most coworkers are merely tolerated socially. Even if I think
| they're wonderful to _work_ with, and cherish and rely on
| their contributions, I 've got zero desire to spend any time
| with 99% of them outside of situations where I'm paid to be
| there.
|
| The people who make blanket statements about how integrated,
| in-office teams are better than remote teams ("every time")
| fill me with contempt. Mostly because I know over the long
| haul their arguments will win and we'll all be back in the
| office because that's what managers who need to be seen want,
| and coworkers who need a family want, and CEOs who need an
| empire want.
|
| Don't trust you're lying eyes! Distributed doesn't work! The
| last two years were a failure. Open source doesn't exist. Now
| drive into the office so we can have a meeting where everyone
| sits in a room and midlessly browses Reddit while someone
| drones on about something that could have been an email.
| tootie wrote:
| I did one of these kind team junkets in like 2001 when I was
| just out of college and realized immediately I never wanted
| to do it ever again. They've been offered a handful of times
| at other places I've worked and it's a hard pass.
| ilammy wrote:
| > _fixed cost of downtown office space_
|
| There you said it. With the office being a fixed expense,
| budget is formed _around_ it, since you "just need it". While
| the trips and conferences are always discretionary expenses,
| and as such will not be made if they could be not made.
| kortilla wrote:
| It's not fixed. I've been through several office moves to
| save costs on leases even at successful companies.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| The fixed budget item is "office", not any particular
| office.
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| I meant "fixed" just in the sense that there is a set
| amount you are contractually obligated to pay regularly,
| as opposed to discretionary costs of something like team
| offsite. If everyone is on vacation for the month of July
| then you can't just decide to not pay office rent for the
| month, whereas you could decide not to have your July
| team offsite.
|
| But calling it "fixed" in the sense that you just have to
| pay it is begging the question. The whole point is that
| you don't need an office in all situations. Or at least
| you don't need a dedicated desk for every employee. So
| you shouldn't look at office rent as a cost of doing
| business thing. You have to really look at whether the
| ROI is there. Maybe it is, maybe it's not based on your
| particular circumstances but it IS a choice.
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| But I think the whole point is that we don't just need it.
| The trend towards remote (or at least remote-friendly) work
| which was dramatically accelerated by the pandemic means that
| office space should be viewed as a discretionary expense. If
| you already are locked into a long-term lease and that money
| is already a sunk cost, then that's one thing. But if you are
| starting a new company or at a point where you need to renew
| an office lease, you have to ask yourself whether there
| really is an ROI on office rent. It's a lot of money after
| all and you can still get a lot of the benefits of in person
| team bonding at a fraction of the cost through regular
| offsites and team building events.
|
| I'll just throw in that "fully remote but with regular
| company off sites" is actually a really attractive
| proposition to an employee. Instead of commuting every day to
| some dreary office I get to work from my very comfortable
| home and still meet my coworkers at some nice destination a
| few times a year. I actually feel like I have a better bond
| with remote coworkers in that situation because when we meet
| in person it is in a "vacation" atmosphere and being time
| limited means we really focus on hanging out together and
| doing group activities.
| moron4hire wrote:
| > This seems not so much as an argument for office vs remote
| work but an argument that pandemics are bad. I think a lot of
| people who didn't work remote before the pandemic have the
| wrong impression about what working remotely is actually like.
|
| That's exactly what some of us said would happen at the
| beginning of the pandemic. There were a large minority of
| people complaining about remote work and questioning how anyone
| could do it. But the pandemic was not a typical remote
| work/work from home situation. People were _forced_ into it.
| You couldn 't bug out to the library to get a change of view.
| You couldn't meet up for drinks or coffee to get even a bare
| minimum of face to face. Some of us who had been remote working
| for a long time predicted this anti-remote work backlash
| specifically because of this.
| ehnto wrote:
| It's prescient, I think many people were feeling like their
| house was being invaded and molded by work requirements, and
| it wasn't a choice they were making. I think when someone
| chooses remote, it's their responsibility to offer a suitable
| working environment and that's clear.
|
| For many working remotely is about the freedom of choice in
| the act of working, choose the time, choose the place, choose
| the equipment. Whereas the pandemic was a situation where
| that freedom didn't exist, so even previously remote workers
| were not as happy with remote work.
|
| It was often trying to make an office environment out of a
| smattering of digital communication tools, and I think that's
| the wrong approach for remote work. Previously I had all the
| above flexibility, in the "everyone's remote" model, I was
| clocking on at 9am, sitting in 10x the bullshit meetings I
| used to be in as they tried to simulate ad-hoc communication,
| and all from my bedroom, not a co-working space or cafe or
| outdoors etc.
| richardfey wrote:
| You could probably afford a _month_ of shared holidays with the
| savings from a physical office
| rzzzt wrote:
| So why aren't companies constantly on ski trips?
| jhurliman wrote:
| My company is remote only and the money saved on office
| space has been reallocated to additional team outings and a
| longer runway. Constant outings sounds a bit overwhelming,
| personally.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| My last remote company had quarterly offsites, and
| sponsored at least a conference of your choice per year if
| you wanted to go to it. My current remote company hasn't
| had many offsites (covid + clients in healthcare) but hires
| aggressively and pays significantly above market. Also
| spares almost no expense on employees. It's hard to compare
| like for like though. How much of any company's actions can
| be attributed to budget savings from cutting physical
| offices, as opposed to any number of other variables:
| decisions from leadership, market strategy, or quality of
| last funding round? It's hard to isolate just the one
| cause, but it might be worth gathering that aggregate data
| to see if patterns exist.
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| Because employees have families and lives outside of work
| so can't just drop everything to go a team ski trip. Once
| or twice a year, sure, but more than that it's a chore more
| than a perk :)
| tapland wrote:
| Because that money is also just profit if it's not spent.
| cudgy wrote:
| Because they have offices?
| noduerme wrote:
| >> it gets you out of the house
|
| Well, it does. Just not for the right reasons.
| richardfey wrote:
| This. I am always in a hurry and anxious, even if I leave the
| house with large advance, just because I am on the "mission" to
| get to work and have to counteract public transport that can be
| delayed etc. Instead when I am out in a park I do truly enjoy
| my green surroundings and relax.
| apple4ever wrote:
| I do like having an in office job, but with the flexibility of
| working from home as needed.
|
| I don't even mind the commute as much. What I absolutely hate is
| open offices. I want my own office where I can have some privacy
| to think and have space.
| newshorts wrote:
| My biggest gripe with returning to the office is the inability to
| determine and enforce priority.
|
| At home, if you slack me and you're not my top priority right
| now, I can ignore you or politely reply that I'll be with you
| shortly.
|
| In the office folks can simply walk over and tap me on the
| shoulder. Due to social norms, I cannot simply ignore you and
| most like will need to devote my full attention to your
| questions.
|
| Essentially, my actions throughout the day make a subtle shift
| from proactive activities to reactive.
|
| If I'm not the only person to experience this, I wonder what the
| macro effect is on an organization?
| cudgy wrote:
| "Zapier, a great distributed company, famously has quarterly
| offsites for its teams where everyone meets in person to
| replicate this effect. However, I highly suspect that most big
| companies won't make any such effort to do this. Even if they do,
| once budgets get stressed, it seems likely this will be the first
| "perk" to go: its benefits are hard to quantify and it certainly
| seems frivolous to the short-sighted."
|
| This seems to contradict the argument for offices. Companies save
| money by having fewer offices, so their budgets should be
| improved. Also, if companies do not see the value of employees
| periodically meeting each other then why do management largely
| prefer face time in offices?
|
| "Getting out of the house and into a setting with other human
| beings builds a heck of a lot more socialization"
|
| Much of this article focuses on the workplace fulfilling out of
| work needs or out of work meetings fulfilling at work
| relationships. Why do people want and expect so much from their
| jobs? Why is that the place to fulfill ones social needs? Pursue
| hobbies and interests outside of work and meet people not
| tethered to your employer. These relationships are stronger and
| transcend work ties. Avoiding terrible commutes provides some of
| the time to pursue such ventures too.
| cabraca wrote:
| I think its the google centric view of the article. All the
| perks google offer in their offices are tools to keep you in
| the office longer. Stay for the Gym, stay for Dinner or come in
| early for lunch. Considering that its naturally that they
| expect your social circle to be mostly other google employees.
| jeffwask wrote:
| There are a lot of alternative methods for bonding in an online
| space. I've been a gamer and run guilds where we never saw each
| other yet people built such strong connections they traveled
| cross country to meet up by choice not force years after. (and
| multiple people got married)
|
| The idea that this is only possible in meat space is such an
| antiquated mindset.
|
| Think outside the box. There are a number of companies offering
| tools, one we use is Donut. https://www.donut.com/blog/ Once a
| week, I am randomly peered with someone for a half hour coffee.
| It's been great and I meet people not just in engineering.
| benreesman wrote:
| The company I work for is still tiny, so we don't know how it's
| going to scale, but we've been spending the money we would spend
| on an office just traveling to work together either collectively
| or in small groups on an as-needed, voluntary basis. Some have
| more flexibility around travel, some less, but we all like and
| care about each other so someone is always willing to go the
| extra mile when someone else can't travel.
|
| This only works because the enterprise is a COVID baby, and so
| the "base load" workflow is totally remote, we've never known
| anything different. This makes being in person pleasant and
| useful but almost never strictly necessary.
|
| I hope it scales because I love it.
| lupire wrote:
| Is this post a year old, or does OP not use calendar correctly?
| sfg wrote:
| "working from home certainly increases the amount of control that
| people have over their day"
|
| Yep. This outweighs all the benefits of being in the office that
| are mentioned in the article.
| lkrubner wrote:
| This is an important issue. My own experience is limited to New
| York City, so I can only comment intelligently on what I've seen
| here. Over the last 18 months I spoke to 30 entrepreneurs about
| this issue, and I've tried to synthesize what I have learned.
| I've posted some of this information previously in various
| comments, in particular, that many entrepreneurs seem to put a
| value on vague and intangible (but apparently important) aspects
| of in-person work. Like I said in an earlier comment, I've had
| clients who offered mid level software engineers an extra $30k a
| year to come into the office. I've also summarized all of this in
| a blog post. For anyone interested, see "What work can be done
| from home? What work needs to be done at an office?"
|
| http://www.smashcompany.com/business/what-work-can-be-done-f...
| koide wrote:
| That's a good argument, but I didn't see the "we want the best
| people we can get with what we want to pay regardless of where
| they are." Which is what some companies do, they hire from all
| over the world and pay them in the same range.
|
| Why should companies hire only from the US if there are as good
| or better people elsewhere?
|
| You're looking at it from the cost reduction perspective, but
| work shouldn't be something you save money on, but invest it
| the best you can to get the best product.
|
| In summary, looks like the CEO and CTO of your sample companies
| don't know how to collaborate remotely. Which is natural
| because it's not intuitive. And if you don't know and don't
| want to learn, or happen to be at a niche not amenable to
| remote collaboration, sure, stay at an office.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Dude, post this as its own submission.
| Thrymr wrote:
| He did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30914179
| mdoms wrote:
| I agree completely with this article. And I understand fully if
| you don't. But for me, nothing I have done in remote work
| compares to my in-person work at really well-functioning
| companies.
|
| I struggle to recall a single memory of my remote working career
| older than 4 months old. But my head is full of memories of my
| in-person work because, while sometimes grueling, was often full
| of fun, surprises, bonding experiences, challenging
| conversations, war rooms etc.
|
| Most of all I worry that our younger employees don't know what
| they've missed out on. I hope they can find a way to develop
| great memories of their own in this brave new world.
| mr90210 wrote:
| I think the author doesn't take in account that some companies
| are being forced to hire remotely due to the shortage of
| professionals in the Software industry.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| I think the biggest problem is that these companies all seem to
| establish themselves in the most expensive metro areas. Even
| with the good salaries of being a software engineer, a lot of
| people would hate to feel like most of their money is going
| towards taxes, rent, etc... and forget about being able to buy
| a decent house in the bay area, the housing prices seem to
| continually increase upward while the majority of the
| population is left renting. Most of my well paid coworkers in
| the bay area hate commuting to work because they live like an
| hour away.
| asciimov wrote:
| Dude, your privileged is showing...
|
| I have yet to work for a company that buys me lunch, much less
| annual ski trips. Hell, coffee hasn't been provided at any of my
| jobs, I've always had to pitch into a coffee pool just to have
| it. That's not to even mention getting to go to conferences. If I
| wanted to attend a conference, it would be coming out of my
| wallet and vacation time.
|
| If you want me to collaborate, put it in on my schedule and pay
| me to do it. I'd say that most of these "spontaneous collision of
| people and ideas" happen during lunch. Guess what, that lunch
| which I am already paying for, is also unpaid time. Ever since
| I've been working from home, my lunch hour is mine. I get to
| unwind, read or watch tv, all while eating a healthy meal.
|
| Finally let's talk about things that would get me back in the
| office. Shorter days, I have to commute a total of 2 hours a day,
| so I want my day to be 2-3 hours shorter. An actual office, with
| a window, door, temperature control, and some kind of noise
| isolation. I don't like working in those open office bullpens
| where I get to listen to salesmen screaming on the phone or
| secretaries sharing the latest gossip. Start screening people for
| personal hygiene. I get so tired of having to work with a heavy
| smoker or someone who can't be bothered to shower before showing
| up to work.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I agree on the open office plans (excuse to cram more people in
| a space) but a decent cube setup isnt all that bad (assuming
| decently high walls).
|
| Not sure how a company buying you lunch makes you privileged -
| mine does not but many bigger companies provide that as a perk
| and it is not super uncommon or something.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Indeed. "My gold-coated bon-bons are empty, the bottle of 20y
| scotch is half-full, and Im ONLY in a 5 star ski resort with my
| colleagues."
|
| Whereas I'm making 150k/yr in the midwest as 100% remote
| engineer, and livin every day to its fullest. I'm certainly
| getting no ski trips or otherwise. Most companies don't do
| that.
|
| I also don't look forward to working at a FAANG either. Way too
| much churn. And I frankly value stability as well. And the
| FAANGs aren't that at all.
|
| As much as the admins here want us to think in the most
| gracious way, I really think these are commissioned hit pieces
| against remote-work. Ive been tracking them, and its long-form
| articles like this that advocate in-person work where it
| doesn't need it.
| olliej wrote:
| What? FAANGs are among the most stable in tech, Apple
| especially is notorious for lifers.
| philwelch wrote:
| Amazon is probably an exception, and based on Netflix's
| stated attitude towards "adequate performance" I wouldn't
| necessarily expect stability there.
| filoleg wrote:
| Yep, Microsoft is in a similar boat. There is a reason for
| why Red West part of the main campus is often referred to
| as Red Vest.
|
| Even outside of that, about half of the people I used to
| work with at MSFT were lifers (7+ years easily, a good
| number of 10+, a few 15+). Not judgement whatsoever, it
| sounded like a win-win situation for all sides involved
| (them and the company). Most of them had kids, families,
| and the primary reason for staying was great life-work
| balance and stability. They weren't "delusional" or
| anything, they knew all the tradeoffs of being a lifer, and
| they've made an extremely reasonable decision to stay.
|
| Note: what I said doesn't seem to apply to most Azure
| teams, as I've heard some wild stories from people who
| switched either to or from Azure (i.e., they experienced
| how it is to work at both Azure and the rest of MSFT).
| Azure is intense.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > An actual office, with a window, door, temperature control,
| and some kind of noise isolation.
|
| Yeah, it would be nice to not feel like being back in
| kindergarten for a change.
|
| Do people even get their own cubes these days?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Hacker news was built by silicon valley tech people, has a lot
| of silicon valley tech people posting. The author doesn't need
| to write for every single possible constituency. Also, many
| other industries provide lunch etc - historically many mining
| and oil and gas companies provided food, housing, everything.
| Some still do. The author wrote in good faith.
|
| There are a lot of people at google who don't come from
| privileged backgrounds. They might have won an iq lottery or
| something, but someone working hard to get a job at a good
| company doesn't make them privileged. What's next? Elon is
| "privileged"?
| uncomputation wrote:
| I generally avoid even talking about him due to his rapid
| followers but uh... yes, Elon Musk's father is "so rich we
| couldn't close our safe" and it's hilarious you chose him -
| of all people - to argue against privilege instead of Bill
| Gates, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, literally anyone of more
| modest upbringing but you chose the actual one with family
| money.
|
| Regardless, I don't think OP was referring to privileged
| upbringing/background but privileged currently e.g.
| privileged for working at a place which provides many
| amenities and trips. I agree with your first paragraph, i.e.
| everyone can only write from their own perspectives, but just
| clarifying the difference.
| beauzero wrote:
| Mines I have worked at in the US only provided meals when you
| were travelling. Although unlimited double brew and a plugin
| for every truck/car in the parking lot was provided. Can't
| speak for oil and gas.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It could be geography dependent - some mines are in the
| middle of nowhere in places like Australia and Canada.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| on that, I've only ever worked at one company that
| provided free coffee (a large bank). And quite frankly,
| it being in Melbourne, Australia, only the absolutely
| desperate would touch it and not just go outside to cafes
| for meetings and buy their own at their own cost.
|
| I also did some work experience at tidbinbilla tracking
| station when I was younger, as well as the radio
| telescope array out near Narrabri. the NASA aligned
| tidbinbilla one had a company cafeteria, which at the
| time I put down to some American cultural import thing,
| because it seemed weird as hell to me. the Narrabri
| facility isn't exactly in the middle of the city either,
| and is the only place I've worked with a bus that came
| round to pick you up from the town each morning (I've
| heard some tech companies do this in Silicon Valley?) and
| even they expected you to make your own lunch (there
| wasn't really an option to go get food from a shop). on
| the upside, they did have a volleyball court, so swings
| and roundabouts...
| mcguire wrote:
| According to his Linkedin link, Charlie graduated in 2012 and
| went straight to work for Google, where he worked for 7 years.
| My hypothesis is that essentially everyone he knows after
| graduating, he met at Google.
|
| Me, I've got friends and relatives. I've got stuff to do. For
| me, going to work does not equal hanging out with my buddies.
|
| Oh, here's another one: the last time I worked in the office,
| my cubicle was directly across the hall from apparently the
| only large, not-completely-booked-up meeting room at MSFC. At
| least once a week I was up closing the goddamn meeting room
| door.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| -nuff said. you nailed it.
| zeptonaut22 wrote:
| FWIW, I definitely don't deny that my privilege is showing.
|
| I no longer work at Google, but whether I want to go into the
| office is probably heavily influenced by the fact that I have a
| ~15 minute door to door bike commute through a nice town (Ann
| Arbor) to my nice coworking space.
|
| I think that the scary part to me about the idea of all jobs
| going remote is that "going remote" seems an antidote to:
|
| - Bad office designs (no privacy, poor light, etc.) - Bad urban
| planning (long commutes, poor transportation options) - Bad
| coworkers
|
| Of those three, only the "bad coworkers" one seems inevitable
| that some people will have to deal with. (After all, those
| people need to work somewhere.)
|
| If I had to commute two hours a day to work in an office with
| no privacy, my opinion on this would surely be different. One
| of the people on my team at Google lived in Oakland and
| commuted to Mountain View every day: that sounded awful. But we
| also don't have to design offices to offer no privacy and we
| know how to design better cities that don't offer horrific
| commutes.
| joshmanders wrote:
| You're thinking purely in the context of everyone living
| where these jobs physically exist.
|
| Tell me what part of remote working is an antidote to me
| living in Dubuque, Iowa where relocation is not a
| possibility... Do I just not work in tech?
| [deleted]
| donatj wrote:
| Do you work in software? I have never heard of a software
| company not providing free coffee. The increased productivity
| completely outweigh the couple dollars for the hot bean water.
| ultra_nick wrote:
| Dell doesn't
| weej wrote:
| My time at Dell immediately brought this to mind. No coffee
| offered other than overpriced you had to purchase from the
| cafeteria. I brought in my own espresso and coffee maker,
| and got chastised by facilities as a fire hazard. We
| weren't even allowed to put in the tiny kitchenette, which
| was a sink with plastic utensils in a couple of drawers.
| Ridiculous.
| mdoms wrote:
| Interestingly, Atlassian (somewhat) famously didn't have
| coffee. They offered free breakfast and lunch, unlimited ice
| cream, more booze than you'd ever want, etc. But their
| philosophy with coffee was that they wanted you to form
| groups and leave the office for a few minutes a couple of
| times a day. It was supposedly a method of bonding and
| spontaneous collaboration. In my opinion it worked well.
| asciimov wrote:
| > Do I work in software?
|
| I sure do. Companies big and small. Some of them at one time
| offered free coffee but the bean counters took away that perk
| as a cost cutting measure.
| a_t48 wrote:
| Literal bean counting, eh?
| joshmanders wrote:
| Then you're not looking very far outside your own bubble,
| because as someone like OP who doesn't have the pleasure of
| working in top tech companies in silicon valley, I never had
| free coffee at any place I had to show up at.
|
| Heck, even being paid decently at those places was far fetch
| let alone all those perks.
| cvhashim wrote:
| You're deep in the trenches if you've only worked in places
| that don't even provide free coffee and teas.
| joshmanders wrote:
| No, I live in a place where the claim to technology fame
| is "We have an IBM support office here, we're a tech
| hub!"
|
| Heck the biggest thing tech wise to come out of my city
| is founder and former CEO of GitHub Tom Preston-Werner
| being from here.
| joshmanders wrote:
| To elaborate the biggest "tech" company I worked at where
| I had to show up was John Deere. They had coffee, but it
| was just a Starbucks directly in JDIS (the "department"
| that handled software dev) and you had to pay to get a
| cup.
| taeric wrote:
| I've worked at a few places where the provided "free" coffee
| was just what one of us decided to bring in and share in the
| kitchen.
|
| I have also yet to work anywhere where the added "agitation"
| of getting folks talking in the kitchen wasn't the largest
| benefit of having said kitchen. (That is, productivity was
| probably lower, but it increased the odds of a productive
| conversation happening. Nothing guaranteed, of course.)
| Supermancho wrote:
| > I have never heard of a software company not providing free
| coffee.
|
| Countless software development companies exist in offices
| without so much as a break room (much less a kitchen). SMH
| chaostheory wrote:
| This is unheard of inside the Silicon Valley bubble. In our
| defense, it also doesn't make sense that an employer
| doesn't provide it for free. Coffee is cheap. It also adds
| productivity.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| One reason some companies dont is because they have
| significant NON tech work force also in the same
| building, and they dont want to provide perks for X that
| they dont for Y in the same building.
|
| If the first 3 stories of your building are call center
| level employees who make barely better than minimum wages
| and the top floor is your well paid software engineers,
| then facilities just says "no free coffee" to everyone.
|
| Though even in places that you would think would be
| stingy give out free coffee and snacks more and more.
| Most of the purse string people like having nice snacks
| too. Even small business owners will cater meals and buy
| nice coffee because they get to have a nice meal that
| counts as a business expense and their premium coffee
| blend they get on order and have every day gets to count
| as one too at that point.
| chaostheory wrote:
| The cost to benefit ratio of coffee is so high that it
| makes sense to provide it to the whole office regardless
| of whether or not they're IT
| rs999gti wrote:
| > non-tech
|
| A Stinging reminder that if your company is not primarily
| a tech company, IT is a cost center; the perks there are
| for normie employees and not to retain tech talent
| bombcar wrote:
| The main thing I've seen is if the local executive uses
| the coffee. If he does, it's free for everyone.
|
| If the executive break room is hidden and secret, then
| there may be a lack of free coffee.
| olliej wrote:
| I have never encountered such a company in software or
| hardware engineering across multiple countries.
|
| I didn't like the skiing or whatever bit in the article,
| but coffee machines, etc are pretty universal
| brimble wrote:
| Closest I've come to no office coffee at a tech company
| is one that just had a Keurig machine and the very
| cheapest K-cups they could find. The only ones that even
| _had_ a flavor were the ones labeled "dark roast", and
| that flavor was very bad. I'm pretty sure an electric
| kettle and a jar of instant coffee would have given
| better results. That place had 500 people and was growing
| fast. Nowhere near SV, though.
| david38 wrote:
| It never happened for lunch for me. It happened while
| overhearing a discussion a few desks down during working hours.
|
| And please, lunch is hardly a privilege. You can make lunch for
| $3. It's a benefit for the company masquerading as a benefit to
| you. Coffee is so cheap it's almost free. I buy it at Costco
| for around $20. I don't know exactly how many cups I get, but
| it's so cheap it's not even worth calculating.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| You're not making the office sound any better with these
| "just do it yourself bro" arguments. They can do that at
| home. If they're not even trying to make the office a place
| people want to be at, then just stop.
|
| "Why do people want to stay WFH when we don't provide
| incentives for them to come to the office?" "Gee Bob I don't
| know."
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