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

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

#791

Post by XajniN » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

vel0city wrote: post #332

ihateolives wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now throw in minimum 0.5h + 0.5h commute or more realistically at least 1.5h total commuting time and suddenly you leave for work before your kids wake up and arrive back home 2-3h before they go to sleep. Who do you want to spend more time during the day, your coworker Bill the senior Java guy or your child Charlie, who has just learned to walk but you were not there to see their first steps? I mean, Bill's a great…

> Now throw in minimum 0.5h + 0.5h commute Minimum half hour commute? Definitely not a minimum. I've had a by bicycle , 5 minutes by car, and my kid's daycare is on the way. Minimum commute is more like 5 minutes. Sure, maybe average commute is a good bit higher, but then say average not minimum.

The commute is counted from the moment you exit your home door. It’s 5 minutes only if you work across the street.

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

#792

Post by deadoralive999 » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

I strongly agree with you. Before the pandemic began I switched jobs from a remote position to an in person position and it was such a positive change for me. And then about 6 months later my company went permanently remote. I mean, yes, there are plenty of points that people have made about open plan being very distracting and stressful, and commutes being long, and so on. But I felt some really strong isolation working from home, and even when I tried working in a coworking space. Yes, I have friends. Yes, I see them regularly, but definitely not every day - I am in my late 30s and it's hard enough finding time when everyone is free. I am married and have a dog. But yet, I miss my commute that took 1.5h each way, because I got some quiet time on the train where I didn't have any obligation to do anything, and a nice walk to and from the train station. I looked forward to my husband picking me up at the train station and my dog excited to see me. I seem to have just as many distractions at home as I did at the office, if not more, because the delineation between work and home isn't as clear, despite having a dedicated office space at home. I sorely miss being able to talk or pair in person on a problem, and I dread having yet another Meet or Tuple call. The strange part is that I've always considered myself to be a strong introvert. But I greatly miss the in person interaction I used to have. I haven't changed jobs because other than the WFH situation I like my job a lot, and besides that, I'm not certain that the same WFO experience even exists anymore. I'm not sure that a WFO setup would be worth a potentially less enjoyable job. So I put up with it.

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

#793

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 6:37 PM UTC

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #777

samuel_backend wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ah, that's probably pretty simple: Other folks don't see the same value in sitting in the same room with the team. It's really no deeper than that. Look, I'm a pretty extroverted, social guy, and as a senior manager, the vast majority of the problems I need to solve involve high bandwidth, 1:1 communication because the problems I solve are people problems first and foremost. So obviously, for me, in my role, face-to-…

[deleted]

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

#794

Post by personalidea » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

abeppu wrote: post #197

abeppu wrote: post #145

Before the pandemic and surge of remote work, a lot of us complained not just about going to the office, but that the office itself was pretty crappy. The open plan creates an environment of high distraction, low privacy, and physical discomfort. Whether or not people wanted to listen to music or anything for hours at a time, they were pushed to do it just to drown out a constant background noise of words that are hi…

Or I guess to make it slightly more explicit: - prior to the pandemic and the surge in remote work, people were already talking about how offices are set up in a way which can be unnecessarily miserable, but crams more people in the same space, minimizing real estate cost per head. - but even though in my city, there's now a giant glut of vacant commercial office space, I've yet to see a single company make the pitch…

The place I am working at has an online booking system for all the desks available the entire office building (~14 floors) and while there are no private one person rooms, the offices are 4-8 seats and there is enough vacancies to find a quiet spot. Plus you get to know people from different departments by sitting in different areas of the building.

Works pretty well. On top, my team could decide to only have a presence day every two weeks and we have that as a meetings day where there is no expectation to write code or do focused work but socialize.

I found that this I am in favor of a hybrid setup like this. For the reasons stated in the post, I really do like coming together in person and at the same time I am a parent that appreciates the time saved when working remote from home most days.

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

#795

Post by personalidea » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 6:58 PM UTC

adamhp wrote: post #87

munchausen42 wrote: post #73

If you wonder why an argument might be controversial, it can helpful to imagine how it would sound like in mirror world: Assume for a moment that working remotly and a flexible workday would have been always the default. And now some companies decide: Hey let's contractually enforce a 9 hour continuous workday where all our workers will be locked in a big ugly building that we build just for that purpose (Btw. at lea…

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…

I found that the sweet spot is somewhere in between these two extremes.

After a week of working from home, sometimes I found that I hadn’t left the house for anything other than groceries.

In the mornings, I get up and get the kids ready. Then work. Then the kids come home. Family time, dinner and so on. Time to sleep. Rinse, repeat.

So yeah, I find going to the office from time to time refreshing. It helps that my team agreed that office days are for socializing and focused work is not expected.

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

#796

Post by hirvi74 » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 7:50 PM UTC

rafaelero wrote: post #780

hirvi74 wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me about your kids, your weekend, etc. and I will listen. We can grab lunch even. But we aren't hanging out after work, going to bars, coming over to my house, I don't want to go to theirs, etc.

:(

Ok, fine. We can hang out, but no one else.

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

#797

Post by LawTalkingGuy » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 8:38 PM UTC

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #789

LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're a "manager", morale issues on the team are your issues. If being told to do things that the company is paying you to do is triggering your morale issues then you probably aren't going to work out at all. If all you wanted was a few dollars more you'd have already asked that in a far simpler way. When I get a coffee I don't check which one the barista wants to make, I assume they're willing to make anythin…

> Given that we already decided I'm not opening it up to you to debate and honestly I wouldn't believe you were arguing openly because you've got a huge motive to stay home and comfy. So, this is a basic labour rights question: How much say does the employee have in the way the business functions? Your attitude seems to be "if you don't like management's decisions, you never should've worked there in the first place"…

> Hell, this attitude is why labour unions were invented.

Nope. Unions aren't to force bosses to hire a type of labor they don't need. I've got relatives who worked in dangerous jobs that needed unions and this sort of emotional grievance nonsense is literally insulting.

As I said, if I get rid of the house I'll get rid of the landscapers. You're trying to use a union to force me to pay you for unneeded work. If we decide we need an office then we need an office workers. No hate on you but you're saying you choose not to do that role.

Do I need to enter into collective bargaining with the Starbucks staff to convince them my desire for a latte is reasonable? Do they have "enough say" to make me drink an espresso instead?

> How much say does the employee have in the way the business functions?

As much as they have a financial stake in the business. Zero by default. I'll ask you if I want to know what you think but you have no "say" as in the ability to make demands. I pay for your knowledge and therefore advice, it's not your right to make me follow it.

> Study after study shows that monetary compensation is not, in and of itself, motivating.

Sure, and study after study shows that people who need external motivation are indistinguishable from potatoes. I don't expect money to motivate you directly, I expect you to connect the motivation from your life goals to your paycheck to the Monday mornings.

> And given industry-wide labour shortages, I suspect you'll find that labour is a lot more empowered, and many people will opt to flee for another workplace where they have a greater say.

You see, this is why I wouldn't have asked you in the first place because you think that explaining basic economics to me will suddenly convince me to make your cushy work-at-home time a human right. Trust me from my time as a boss and more recently merely as a hiring reviewer, the desire to "have a greater say" has never left the lips of a single productive employee.

If you want to "have a say" then join a poetry circle. I want you to have as much, and only as much, influence as you have sense. It's not about empowering you, it's about using you to make both of us a living.

> Is a pretty strong indication that I'd never ever want to work for you.

Oh no. Employee who refuses to do what is needed is unwilling to take my money.

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

#798

Post by longtimesomaguy » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 12:16 AM UTC

I think we are on a deadend track debating our values with each other.

Was it hard to find a quiet place to work at home? Yes. Did I eventually after setting up shop in a greenhouse, then at a family members house, then in a camper/rv. It’s possible.

Is in person interaction “good”. Sure. Is it better than the alternative. Nobody has proven that.

Corporations want control, and they are under the control of municipalities which was tax money for meals, coffees, parking tickets, the tailor, public transit, gas etc. I strongly believe that is what is driving talk of coming back. That and commercial real estate interests. Where does all that money go now? We decide, and we want to keep it that way.

Was open office layouts a crap show? Yes. Did it make us feel like our own voices weren’t heard (over others). Yes. We take that back now.

Do we want to waste time on commutes if we have a place in the country that’s comfy and doesn’t expose us to long commute times in subpar conditions, exposure to the flu and loud talkers and interrupt driven people? No.

Does in person help people who haven’t already done a 20 year slog of going into the office. Historically looking back sure maybe. But we evolve to the conditions.

There was zero reason why I couldn’t do my job remotely for the last 20 years. But management had their way.

Now the tables have turned, I’d say adapt, move away from the city, get some elbow room, and relax and enjoy. That’s what the rest of us are doing that approve of WFH.

Adapt, or lose out. Outsourcing isn’t replacing our jobs anytime soon. That’s a red herring.

Productivity is at an all time high, if you include work like balance into the picture.

Enjoy what Covid gifted us, finally the ability to push back on the crappy aspects in office life. Gave us a voice, the ability to make our own life choices. You can go back to the office, but many won’t be there. The world has changed and there is no undo button. Learn to find ways to turn a rainy day to your advantage. For example, I love skiing, so when it rains, it makes me happy. And I can actually pull off skiing on lunch breaks now so hey, my life is so much better without in office work.

Shareholders? Well, looks like they need to account for workers conditions, work life balance, and new measures, that they didn’t have to before.

Sorry, not sorry aboutcha!

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

#799

Post by listenallyall » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 1:01 AM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #784

listenallyall wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, really screwed. Choosing the top country by least hours worked is not appropriate as a baseline. Look at Mexico, or any Asian country besides Japan. They work their asses off compared to Americans. Meanwhile software engineers in the U.S. make more than twice their German counterparts' salary: https://www.google.com/amp/s/codesubmit.io/blog/software-eng... Of course, not everyone is a software engineer. But it d…

It's not 1:1 for other reasons either besides just pay, like you don't have to pay anything for college tuition in Germany and they have universal healthcare, so you pay a ton less for healthcare expenses also, so that helps close the gap for lesser pay (also, you're working 30% less hours on average, so you have more free time to pursue other things, including a part time job if you really need to). $400/month of my…

You seem like a rational person. Why haven't you moved to Germany?

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

#800

Post by stemlord » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 4:50 AM UTC

adamhp wrote: post #87

munchausen42 wrote: post #73

If you wonder why an argument might be controversial, it can helpful to imagine how it would sound like in mirror world: Assume for a moment that working remotly and a flexible workday would have been always the default. And now some companies decide: Hey let's contractually enforce a 9 hour continuous workday where all our workers will be locked in a big ugly building that we build just for that purpose (Btw. at lea…

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…

I'm genuinely wondering if this is satire. No offense. I was just under the impression that the ping pong table has been the subject of enough startup-culture critique in popular opinion to put the idea that employees will actually see it as a meaningful perk to rest. Also interesting is the assertion that having to ask "can you see my screen" is enough of a problem for someone that it rivals waking up an hour earlier for a grueling commute...