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Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

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611–620 of 830 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#611

Oh my - I've been waiting to hear this since forever, and you couldn't have said it better. I feel exactly the same way, and I feel like specially the younger tech workers are losing a big chunk of what it means to build work relationships (which are some of the best), and to connect with people. I don't know how to fix it as like you said, most people will scream when you mention work from office/

> younger tech workers are losing a big chunk of what it means to build work relationships (which are some of the best) I dont want to judge but its really hard not to if you see work relationships as some of the best relationships available. They are absolutely relationships that are formed from forced repeated interaction. Maybe I have had a few co workers who I would have naturally become friends with outside of w…

Repeated, unplanned interaction is the basic formula for all friendship development. Most people don't "naturally" become friends with strangers they brush past in public one time.

Work is not the only place that can provide repeated, unplanned interaction but once out of school it is the big one.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#612
post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except in NYC/Brooklyn, the crime rate and filth are both high. Not to mention the rude behavior that takes over anyone who spent more than a year there. Something like Tokyo, Singapore in terms of lawfulness and politeness is whats desperately needed in the US. Any city in the US is far from that.

As always, NYC is one of the safer US cities in the nation across basically any metric you can find, and sometimes one of the safest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... We leave our trash in the streets, and I'm an asshole. So I can concede those points! But most city dwellers in the US live somewhere less safe than NYC.

But most city dwellers in the US live somewhere less safe than NYC.

The link you provided says NYC is the 67th most dangerous by crime rate. That is for the city as a whole, not for any particular borough or neighborhood. It also doesn't take into account other non-crime related danger. It also lists over 20 million people living in cities with a lower crime rate, even though it doesn't include hundreds of other cities because it is a list of the top 100 cities by crime rate.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#613
post #373
post #355

Contest matter as I have learnt. I held a similar opinion to yours sometime back. But like most things in life it’s all about trade offs. My previous role had a hybrid policy WFH 3 days and then from the office. To a large extent it really didn’t matter where you worked, so long as work got done. I however rarely WFH. My office was about a 15 minute walk from my where I lived, that commute was never a challenge for m…

I agree but meeting your team is really important, not only for you but for the team itself. People tend to care a lot less about the team or the company when they are not on site to socialize with coworkers. It means people may not think twice about getting another job, a remote job is only seen as a source of income, at least that was my case. So in the company's PoV, I would not hire full time people but hybrid se…

Perhaps a solution to the problem of people not caring as much about the team and company is not implementing a WFO policy, I wouldn’t be surprised if it works in the opposite direction.

In the current market, employees really want to have a flexible schedule. Keep in mind you’re competing with other companies for these talents. If you’re bent on having people in the office, chances are you might have to hire fresh talents or probably beneath the standards you want. And hope they don’t jump train when they build some experience.

Then again people resign from full remote roles also. It’s really in the control of the employee to continue the contract if they so wish

Just maybe it’s the Employer’s responsibility to ensure employees are productive even when they only care about their task, imo that should be enough if the company knows what they’re about. Also a job is primarily a source of income before anything else.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#614
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WFO isn't necessarily about personal preference. People who want everyone to WFO believe that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. That is different than someone who desires to work from an office or remotely out of personal preference. For instance, I may prefer to WFH because it makes my life more convenient, but I can also accept that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. Personally, I haven't see…

> I haven't seen many good arguments that WFH produces superior work outcomes. Why should you want _arguments_ about a question for which there has been actual research? "Superior work outcomes" is a fuzzy thing to measure, but when units of work are clearly countable and it's agreed what constitutes "done", there are multiple studies that have found that WFH employees were more productive (i.e. did more in the same…

A call center is not really a collaborative job at all, so it's unsurprising that there would be some gain from WFH. I don't think you can generalize what works in a call center to what works for knowledge workers, though.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#615
For, as you say, context: next summer makes 25 years that I've been working as a software engineer. I've founded startups, worked at other people's, worked for established publicly and privately held companies, and also several stretches in government. I've never worked at a FAANG, never applied to one, and don't plan to ever do so.

I've never liked working at the office, and the pandemic is not the first time that I've worked remotely for years at a stretch.

I resent the idea that, after working 40 hours a week (when your employer is not pressuring you to work 60, 80, or more, which is a whole other story), I'm supposed to spend the remaining time voluntarily hanging out with my co-workers. After a "long workshop meeting in the evening" (puke and double puke), if you want me to stick around for dinner, you'd better have brought a gun. I do actually hang out with my co-workers--the ones I like. I don't need my work to set my social calendar for me.

"There may be product managers that ignore the noise-cancelling headphone stop-sign", in the sense that there may be water in the ocean. And it's not just PMs, there are plenty of coders who see nothing wrong with looking over at someone's screen and asking why "they want to beat someone over the head with their keyboard repeatedly". Please don't do this. At least not to me. If I'm that mad already the last thing I need is someone interrupting my train of thought.

I wouldn't worry too much about outsourcing. People have been freaking out about it for 20+ years, and there's still plenty of jobs to go around. US programmers don't have a lot of trouble finding work, even as high as salaries for devs are here. (Of course, you can't do completely equal salary comparisons between the US and other countries, because of health insurance).

Finally, on a side note:

> we all like the same exotic progressive metal bands

IDK if this is your idea of "exotic" but in case you hadn't heard, Opeth is playing the Admiralspalast next month.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#616
post #49

I can't help but feel these takes come from a lack of empathy; I'm the exact opposite, but I fully accept people have your view. What strikes me as odd is the incapability for the pro-in-office crew to see that they're seeking participation for what they want, for what I now see as a considerable personal cost (commute time, comfort, simply not seeing the work place as a social venture), the participation from the WF…

I empathize with the shitty commutes of kitchen and janitorial staff who aren't paid enough to live closer. My fellow SWEs are paid more than enough to live comfortably in the city. Some of them choose to trade off commute time for other goods; that's up to them.

I disagree that coming into the office is such a burden or that Zoom is so benign.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#617
WFH equates to more flexibility and freedom for most WFH proponents. Freedom to choose how to spend hours reclaimed from commute, flexibility regarding when exactly and how to work, depending on what works best for the individual. Freedom to choose where you live. Having the option to move to a place they may find more enjoyable for whatever reason. Move to the countryside, move closer to parents, whatever.

When you suggest having mandated WFO time, no matter how little, you suggest taking away some of their freedom. People tend to not like their freedoms being taken away.

And… Don’t worry about Eastern Europeans taking your job. In a WFH world they don’t have to settle for Berlin salaries.

EDIT: If you’re serious about social cohesion, do cool retreats and events. Having actual adventures make people bond more than water cooler chitchat.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#618
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect commute/transport is the larger factor among the two you shared. The extracurricular usually comes down to eating and drinking. I'm sure particularly in the mid-west the options are more limited, but in a large enough city there's somewhere to go - it just might not be worth it. You'll still have to commute home in the end, and if you can't just walk to the fun destination from work then that's more time lo…

> WFH can be predicated by zoning / city density I would add nature as an opposite factor to city density. A lot of magical places exist, but they don't usually have offices and jobs. Remote work enables one to experience them. Many years ago I had been remote working for a couple of years and then realized that I didn't have to continue living in Dallas with 100+ degree summers and air quality warnings several days…

There are magical places, though they seem a tad less magical when they get overcrowded. I see owning a piece of 'magic' as a level of privilege that I don't think we can expect most middle-or-above class workers to indulge in without decimating away the magic, unless the population finally drops.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#619
I feel this strongly, I used to enjoy being in the office and working with my coworkers and these endless zoom calls suck. Maybe I'm a weirdo, maybe I had a good set up/team, or maybe just macroeconomic despair is hanging over things. Maybe the earlier part of the tech business cycle was just better and we're at the end of it and things seem just generally pessimistic. IDK.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 hours at work, 8 sleeping, that's still 8 more left. I would be surprised if you took all of them to cook and clean. Even with 4 hours of chores a day, that's still 4 hours to do whatever you want. Doesn't mean you spend them all that day, or all of them socializing. Maybe you use mondays to study, tuesdays you spend more time cleaning so wednesdays you can go out do something. Also consider that if you strictly so…

Why do so many people try to do the hard math when it comes to this? The reality is by the time I am able to go out on a weekday it's like 8pm. Very few of my peers, friends or not, want to go out late on a weekday after already having a long day. If you're able to do better than that, then you are in an uncommon bracket.

Well, not sure how else to approach you with the fact that there is more time than you give credit to. Also, 8pm? How much time do you spend on commute? Do you live in a mansion and don't hire a cleaning person?

To be fair, I personally am on an uncommon bracket where I usually socialise over the internet, people who make games tend to like playing them too, and there is no commute.

That said, you're still framing it as a work thing. Your peers can do whatever they want, but the rest of the world still exists. Unless you're saying everyone within 20min of your commute path also follow this routine pattern, but then I would expect you to be on an uncommon bracket.

There are countless activities you can partake that involve interacting with other people and give you opportunity to create friends.

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