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

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

#751

Post by vladvasiliu »

petsfed wrote: post #601
ghaff wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, I have about a five minute drive to the nearby train station and then I'm something over an hour by train and subway into the city depending upon where I'm going. Aside from not being able to actually walk to the train station, I'm not sure how you improve on that given the distance no matter what country you're in. And having done that commute about 3 days a week for over a year, it was pretty bad even th…

I think the way to improve that is to somehow lower the cost of housing, such that workers can afford to live close enough to the office to minimize the time cost of commuting. When I was commuting in the Bay Area, I'd walk half a mile to the local BART station (a walk I rather enjoyed), then I'd spend the next 90 minutes on a bus or train until I arrived at work. If I got to BART after 6am, I'd stand on the train fo…

I agree with you on principle. However, in practice, I don't know how that would work out. In places like Paris, for example, jobs tend to be very concentrated in a few hotspots. This is a nightmare for infrastructure, like you can imagine because everybody wants to get to the same place at the same time.

There were attempts to "distribute" this, but as far as I can tell, they didn't really work out as expected.

I still think that this distribution is the best approach, though, instead of building 200-story buildings around the office towers. And this distribution can take multiple forms, one of which is remote working.

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

#752

Post by jjav »

akoncius wrote: post #724
ameister14 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they must login to show activity on their computer every 15 minutes or else be fired. This is the stupidest thing, I think - I don't care if you're at your computer all the time I am at my computer, I care if you get shit done

it gets a bit tricky when you ask urgent question to colleague and he is not responding to you for 30 minutes.

> it gets a bit tricky when you ask urgent question to colleague and he is not responding to you for 30 minutes.

This type of interruption culture is very harmful both directly to productivity (it takes a long time to get back to focus from being interrupted) and also to mental health from the pressure of being constantly interruped and expected to jump at every slack message.

There should be no question that is so urgent that it can't be answered tomorrow. Do a full day of work and check & answer your messages once a day, morning or evening.

The exception is people on call who of course do need to respond to things within minutes but that's why being on call is so exceptionally stressful. Rotate that so nobody is subject to such stress very often.

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

#753

Post by teg4n_ »

bodge5000 wrote: post #139
adamhp wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I support fully remote work and will likely never be returning to office in my lifetime if I can help it. Here I play devil's advocate. Even though it is a hypothetical world you've constructed, you still framed it from the perspective of this world. I can do the same thing you did with a different bias. Imagine a world where everyone is socially isolated, forced to work 8 hours a day from their living sp…

> Imagine a world where everyone is socially isolated, forced to work 8 hours a day from their living space Advocates of WFH rarely care if people want to work in an office if they want to, as long as they don't have to. So that'd be "Imagine a world where everyone is socially isolated, able to work 8 hours a day from their living space or an office if they'd prefer"

Imagine a world where people work from home but aren’t socially isolated because they spend time with their families, friends, and local communities rather than whoever they happen to be working with at the time.

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

#754

Post by nickm12 »

jedberg wrote: post #490

I think a lot of this boils down to kids vs no kids. I really enjoyed working in the office when I didn't have kids. Hanging out with coworkers after work was pretty normal, and sometimes my wife would come along too. We're still good friends with a lot of my old coworkers. In fact, those are the people we hang out with now. But now that I have kids I'd rather spend time with them or on my hobbies with them or hangin…

FWIW, I have kids and strongly prefer going into the office. Keeps my home life and work life separate and when I am home it is easier to be in the mental space of being with the family. When I worked from home for the first 18 months of the pandemic, I lost that separation and it was stressful.

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

#755

Post by [deleted] »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #453
rafaelero wrote: post #443

I feel exactly the same. The work I do seem to matter less to me when my whole interaction of my team is online.I used to extract so much personal satisfaction from work and now it's just a little bit. I am locked in this situation, though, because there is no way I am finding in Brazil a WFO job that pays as good as a remote job from a US company.

Its good to not derive all your satisfaction from work and to seek it out from things that are more pertinent to your life, versus your bosses. It will probably make retirement feel more fulfilling instead of empty.

[deleted]

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

#756

Post by throwaheyy »

the_gipsy wrote: post #251

It sounds exactly like Stockholm Syndrome. You should try having fun and making friends outside of work. I suppose you can connect with IT people in meetups for example for OSS. > 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 ea…

This crap from the WFH crowd is really annoying.

“You should try making friends outside of work!”

I prefer WFO and have plenty of friends outside of work, thank you. Maybe WFH should try being less anti-social with the people they work with.

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

#757

Post by throwaheyy »

marcinzm wrote: post #46

I don't depend on work for my social life and never really did. If I want to hang out with people I do so with my close non-work friends, or go to an event or something else. I enjoy the people I work with but I don't aim for them to be my close friends.

Why does the WFH crowd always assume the those who prefer WFO are relying on work for a social life? Does it make them feel better about being anti-social shut-ins?

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

#758

Post by johlits »

Sometimes I get a bit of "abused victim" mentality from a lot of people who don't want to go back to the office. I think it makes sense that the ones who were more popular are more motivated to go back and vice versa. That being said, we all have our strengths and weaknesses.

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

#759

Post by samuel_backend »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #600
samuel_backend wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work a 4 day work week and am complaining about this BECAUSE I care about the fun and meaning these 32 hours / week have, not because I want to work more or define myself through work achievements. And again, I wouldn't want to force anyone to come to the office. I am merely asking for other people's opinions.

Hey, the OP! Great, I can just straight up ask you: given that, would you agree with the statement that preferring a WFH arrangement and being ambitious/"invested"/whatever are largely orthogonal to one another? I ask because, right here, you're tying "[caring] about the fun and meaning [of your work hours]" to working in an office. And I honestly just don't see the connection. Can you say more about that?

No, I absolutely don't and I feel that's the main point where people take offense in what I said.

My question goes more in the direction of: For me personally, the communal and social aspect of occasionally sitting in the same room with the team I'm building software with has always given me a lot. And I have experienced recently that loads of people will not even take a 20 minute commute once a week to have some few meetings face-to-face because they apparently don't even see the slightest addition in value from that. I can't really wrap my head around it (because I obviously have an orthogonal viewpoint here) and was trying to get more insight into this way of thinking.

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

#760

Post by watwut »

subradios wrote: post #744
watwut wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no way to run a business that's community oriented. Which means that the only actual community available is your work community. Actual community does not requires a business. Building relationships does not require business either. I did not said it is degenerate. But it is dishonest when what I described is framed as somehow being more performing, because of spending more time in workplace slowing down e…

Actually it does, or religion. I'm assuming you're not a fan of evangelicals? That seems like a barb, but the fact is that it's quite difficult to maintain community organizations without a central business or religious organization. However, profit maximization and digital first precludes physical community, where you have the people you have. Everyone can opt out and play WoW instead.

I genuinely think that believe stuff is impossible without being centered over business is odd and possibly one of reasons of loneliness. Businesses are good for economy, but they designed for profit making and effectivity. Community building is opposite.

And also, no I am not much fun of evangelicals nor conservative Catholics for that matter. Too much authoritarian control, too much hate and too much of paranoia. (And yes, I grew up in christian environment).

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