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Let employees work from home

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Re: Let employees work from home

#71

Post by douche »

camelNotation wrote: post #4

I think WFH is a great idea, but until we can do multi-user video conferencing over the average home internet connection, it just isn't going to be as good as in-person interactions. However, once we can reliably see one another's faces in HD and share screens at the same time, it might even be superior to sitting next to someone and having them try to look over your shoulder as you show them something or ask a quest…

I really, really, don't want to be in some kind of panopticon video conferencing situation all day long. Half of the appeal of working from home is that you get to go off in your cave and actually do some deep work for a few hours at a time, without somebody poking at you or shouting in your ear every ten minutes.

In general, it appears to me that most businesses are wildly disorganized, and don't bother to plan anything more than about four hours in advance. Thus you have all of this unrelenting communication going round and round in circles, with priorities and goals constantly in flux, and nobody knowing what the hell is going on long term.

The most productive stretch of my career, I went into the office on Monday, did staff meetings, planned out work for the rest of the week, and caught up on any office politics and other such that needed to happen, then I worked from home the rest of the week. I've never gotten so much done since, nor been happier about it.

Re: Let employees work from home

#72

Post by CPLX »

rumcajz wrote: post #63

The article assumes that making money is the primary goal of a corporation. If it was, then sure, WFH would make sense. However, the corporation is not a sentient entity. It cannot desire anything, be it money or something else. It's only human participants that have incentives. Of those, only shareholders have direct incentive to make profit, but even then they may own the shares for speculative purposes and desire…

> imagine what would happen if one chimpanzee refused to participate in the group's interactions, walked away, but still demanded his share of bananas. It's not going to work.

I feel like this part of your comment could easily be overlooked, but it's a pretty astute observation of how group dynamics applies to this situation. We're wired to be tribal animals, to some extent.

Everyone knows that "culture" is an important part of a company's success. The idea of working from home profoundly affects the culture.

Re: Let employees work from home

#73

Post by mabbo »

radmuzom wrote: post #36

As a divorced single guy with not too many friends, I look forward every day to go to work and have people around me. I interact socially only with three or four of my office mates. Anyway, I may be the exception, but I am not an employee who wants to work from home.

Even as a married guy, apart from my wife the people I speak most to are the people at my office. I'd go nuts if I worked solely from home.

Are you also in the 30-something friend-slump? My parents (late 60s) have a more active social life than me.

Re: Let employees work from home

#74

Post by k__ »

jasode wrote: post #7

>Objections to work from home fall apart Essays from workers like Jen McCown isn't going to work. What works is to have massively successful businesses that beat the competition because their employees work remotely . Since no multi-billion dollar business has demonstrated that specific cause & effect, the idea doesn't gain traction. Yes, businesses like Basecamp and Automattic have remote workers but I'm talking abo…

Hu?

Basecamp and Automattic are basically full remote companies with world wide reach of their products. Automattic is even global marked leader with Wordpress.

What else do you need?

Re: Let employees work from home

#75

Post by poslathian »

mabbo wrote: post #67
barrkel wrote: post #45

I worked remotely, from home, for 5 years. These days, I work mostly in the office, with a 40 minute commute each way, despite the option for occasional working from home. There's a few reasons to prefer working in the office. The single biggest one is the hard delimiting of the work day; when I'm not in the office, I'm not working, I'm not available on email or chat, and unless it's an exceptional situation, nobody…

> when I'm not in the office, I'm not working This resonates very strongly with me. A "wfh" day for me means I get half as much done. My home is where I keep all my distractions! > You can put together a logical argument, a coherent or strawman proposal, and discuss things at length point by point. It's much higher bandwidth. But too few people read long emails My trick for this: I write the email, then I go back to…

This is good advice, thanks!

Re: Let employees work from home

#76

Post by misiti3780 »

jasode wrote: post #7

>Objections to work from home fall apart Essays from workers like Jen McCown isn't going to work. What works is to have massively successful businesses that beat the competition because their employees work remotely . Since no multi-billion dollar business has demonstrated that specific cause & effect, the idea doesn't gain traction. Yes, businesses like Basecamp and Automattic have remote workers but I'm talking abo…

github was an example until they changed their policy - no ?

Re: Let employees work from home

#77

Post by douche »

user5994461 wrote: post #16
alansammarone wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically every piece of useful information that can be encoded using your voice can also be encoded using an email - and in a much more efficient way, since you don't have to keep deciphering emotional cues. Of course, expressing emotions, for example, can be harder, but I don't think engineers should be relying too much on expressing their emotion as a way to do a good job.

Text is the least efficient of all forms of commutations. How long to write a long email? How long to speak to someone?

How long do the sound waves from speech persist in a gaseous medium, or the often equally gaseous white matter between your ears? How long does an email, backed up and archived by sender, recipient, archiving software, compliance department, etc, etc persist.

People tend to actually think before they write something down that will last forever. Much less so when they're flapping their gums in real-time. High quality, premeditated communication trumps low-quality, off-the-cuff communication, for me, anyway.

Re: Let employees work from home

#79

Post by jperkin »

sigi45 wrote: post #2

Or don't. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. There is a story of mysql as a company who had an employee who was not reachable for a few months. Yahoo got there workforce back at the office. I personally like to have the option to work at home when necessary and i might get more stuff done at home i also might just not work.

MySQL is a great example of it working. Hundreds of employees, the vast majority remote, regardless of where they were located. Sold for $1B.

It was my first remote job and I enjoyed it immensely, so much so that I haven't had an office job in 10 years now, and have no desire to return to one.

Re: Let employees work from home

#80

Post by JustSomeNobody »

barrkel wrote: post #45

I worked remotely, from home, for 5 years. These days, I work mostly in the office, with a 40 minute commute each way, despite the option for occasional working from home. There's a few reasons to prefer working in the office. The single biggest one is the hard delimiting of the work day; when I'm not in the office, I'm not working, I'm not available on email or chat, and unless it's an exceptional situation, nobody…

All of this, but I'd like to add a couple things.

It is hard, after a time, to not be around people. If you WFH, make sure to spend some time in a cafe or something.

No matter how good the team is at communicating, you're still going to miss those hallway conversations. Just know this and accept it. When you realize you have missed something, get the team to fill you in immediately and document what you've missed.

Which brings me to...

Whether you WFH or not, always follow up with a persistent[0] communication form for important bits of information.

[0] Email, Bug tracker, whatever. If you've had a conversation about it, make sure it is documented. Otherwise it never happened.

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