631–640 of 830 posts
But, whatever portion of us is employed by old stodgy companies seems more at risk now that most of them have figured out how to have productive WFH techies.
With all due respect, this is mostly my problem with the "work-from-office" (WFO for ease) crowd. Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy. Very few, if any, of the WFH crowd want mandatated WFH, it would make no sense. But then the WFO crowd often says no, I don't care what makes you happy, because you being in makes me happy. That doesn't…
Thusly anecdotally armed, I can tell you that for cases towards the center of the bell curve, employees working in the office is better for the company and arguably better for the employee long-term. More shared vision, more opportunities for cross-pollination, more quick problem solving. All the usual arguments. It worked in my case, but productivity plummeted for the next guy who tried it, and we had to let him go.
It worked in my case because this was before the time when every kid expected to be able to work from home, and so I was terrified on a daily basis that out of sight would become out of mind. In the early days I made a point of traveling to HQ one week of every four, to meet the new folks and maintain relationships. I strove to overachieve so I didn't become redundant. Even so, by the end of the decade, with the growth of the company I was noticeably detached from the centers of power and the office culture, serving a role not much different from a contractor.
Not this specific post, which is reasonable and well-thought-out, but many rants I've heard by WFH proponents come across as myopic and naive. Yes, it can succeed sometimes, for some combinations of office culture and individual. Just based on my own experience, more often it doesn't.
> Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy.
Salaried employment in this business (at least in the US) is a contract between you and somebody who wants to give you a lot of money, with some expectations in return. The person offering the money has the right to set the terms of that contract, and you have the right to reject that contract and work somewhere else. I view this as the actual "choice of what makes that individual happy."
Finally, let's not forget that people working in group settings is what got us here. It gave us the airplane, modern medical care, and the internet. New is sometimes better, but sometimes it's not.
It sounds like you're an extrovert. The tech scene tends to have more introverts, hence why this is a controversial opinion for your friend circle. I think of it like this - extroverts gain energy from social interaction, introverts lose energy from social interaction. Working in an office environment with all extroverts is great so long as the company's work doesn't require more introverts than it has available. But…
I think it's more nuanced than the introvert/extrovert duality. One needs a mix of socialization and stimulation levels. And ideally, control over that mix. Cycling between social and private spaces throughout the day was a way to achieve that. Now there's only one space. Either it's got other people in it, and there's no escape from them, or it doesn't, and you'll only ever see people by explicitly scheduled plans. Both of those are bad.
The open office wasn't a particularly good equilibrium, since you were stuck in a highly stimulating environment the whole workday. What I'd really like is what I had in college: access to a private room, shared but silent workspaces, and social/lounge settings. No one's going to pull you out of deep focus if that's where you want to be. But when you want to come up for air, you can wander over to a more social space and there's probably a few people there.
I am in the same boat as you. I like to work from the office as it feels lot more social and productive too. Brainstorming or white boarding is not the same for me when I am remote. I have made so many good friends at work because we were meeting everyday. While I have made some good friends in remote setup too, I haven't met them outside work (working hours) ever. However, there are people, who don't like interrupti…
Work relations have always been transactional. The idea of everyone being buddy-buddy at work is pushed by a company right up until the moment they lay you off because it is in their best financial interest to do so. For many of us, we are happy to trade less time spent socializing these forced, thin relationships, for more time with the meaningful relationships we’ve created with friends and family.
How does one make their first set of friends? school, neighbourhood where we live, college? These all social places give us opportunity to meet new people, and only those who we feel more comfortable with, become our friends.
Would we want kids to just learn from home using Zoom and not go to school? I would not, because I want them to learn social skills and make new friends.
For me, workplace is also one of such social places which provides opportunity to meet new people. But that does not mean I'm not meeting my other friends or losing touch with the family.
I don't want to extrapolate my experiences over others' and I am generally very empathetic to those who prefer to work from home and want to maintain transactional relation with people at work.
> And finally, I feel no one else is realizing that they are happily hacking away at the amazingly well-paid branch they're sitting on. As soon as a company's IT department is practically fully remote, why should they page a German wage for someone who is a face on a screen, when they can pay a fraction for that same face broadcasted from a few hundred kilometers further east or south? German is hardly used in busine…
BigAnnoyingCo isn't going to lay your whole team off and hire an entire new team in Elbonia.
They're going to not replace "B" or "C" players when they leave, or lay off 1 or 2 people here or there. And they are going to hire 1, 2, 3 "A" Players that happen to live in Elbonia along the way.
Pretty soon your team is completely geographically distributed.. you'll have a bunch of "A" Players that are scattered around the world. At that point it becomes a question does the superior talent level of the players negate any advantage it would have to have a group of employees in one part of the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If what makes you happy is a condition in which someone else is unhappy, that person is unlikely to react well. I really hate zoom meetings. Unfortunately if everyone just does whatever they want, then even the in-person meetings get dragged onto zoom because there’s at least a few people who are remote and need to dial in. Early on as we returned to office we even wound up taking a lot of meetings in the office ov…
>I really hate zoom meetings. Unfortunately if everyone just does whatever they want, then even the in-person meetings get dragged onto zoom because there’s at least a few people who are remote and need to dial in. Something often missing from these discussions is that at many large companies, A lot of people are scattered around the country/world so, even if they are in an office, a lot of meetings are going to be b…
But that's exactly what the parent posts have issues with. The false claim that the WFH people are letting everyone do what they want while the WFO's are not letting everyone do what they want.
Because the WFH people are forcing the WFO people into zoom meetings. Having to dial in individually because you say that's "good policy" takes away the thing that WFO people want: To not sit in zoom meetings all day.
I don't know if you're aware, but good devs in Poland, Ukraine or Romania are practically being paid western EU wages by now.
And when it comes to people who are outside EU: There's definitely talented people but experience from my 10y+ of working is that shared cultural understanding is as important. That's why hiring devs from several timezones away doesn't often work, even if they're talented and cheaper.
BTW. On my side, living in France, I doubled my salary by starting to work remotely. Quite likely you can also find better paying jobs than your current one that are full remote. (Now, France outside of Paris is generally severely underpaying, and probably in Berlin wages are higher; but still there are companies paying higher than std Berlin wage on full remote).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> remarkably condescending I suspect there are two big difference between OP and many of the readers here. At least for sure, Berlin vs most major US cities is night and day different in terms of commute and enjoyment opportunity. Berlin is a fun city full of things to do, places to eat, and clubs. Plus it's all accessible without a car. Meanwhile, in the US, it's usually a very different story. Doing something after…
Speaking as someone living in Berlin: > Berlin is a fun city full of things to do, places to eat, and clubs. And I already have my friends outside of work to go do these things, or to go to the bar, or check out the restaurant. > we don't like talking to people. No, more likely it's just that I don´t want to hang out with you . Let me explain. Berlin might be a place of diversity, but it's not really heterogeneous. T…