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Let employees work from home

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Re: Let employees work from home

#141

Post by foobarge »

brianwawok wrote: post #35
Morgawr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a side note, I can work from home at Google. I don't do it often, usually only when waiting for a large package to be delivered (new TV, etc) or because of other IRL necessities like people doing works at home or similar. I prefer working in the office with my workstations and my coworkers and environment that keeps me focused, but I have plenty of coworkers that regularly WFH especially on those days (like h…

My overall impression that WFH is very frowned upon at Google. Sure, maybe you can use it 2 days a month. But no thanks, I get to WFH every day. Life is too short to commute.

I work for the big G. and I work from home. There's a couple hundred employees that work full time from home, a minuscule amount in comparison to the work force.

I travel to the office every two quarters and I usually get nothing done (meetings, interruptions, etc...)

VC, chat and email makes it possible to do work. Folks saying that they can't, err, "ideate" when they're not together making noise and preventing other people from working just don't know how to use the tools they have.

Re: Let employees work from home

#142

Post by korzun »

bitL wrote: post #117

The crab mentality here is really appalling :-( I work remotely for 6+ years; during that time I created some unique algorithms, traveled around the world, met diverse types of people giving me unexpected inspirations from which business benefited tremendously (unique stuff nobody else has). I have the big 4 companies trying to contact me all the time if I wouldn't want to work for them, however seeing inside e.g. cr…

You are an exception. I was a huge advocate for working from home because I would get things done and end up saving two hours of commute.

Your perception of this approach changes relatively quickly in a managerial role.

If you are shaving 1-2 hours off your commute, then the overall output should be in line with whatever it was in the office. I probably met two other engineers that kept that in check.

Re: Let employees work from home

#143

Post by twothamendment »

beachbum8029 wrote: post #27
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…

Doesn't Google Hangouts let you do this? Is the average home connection not good enough for hangouts?

Just today we tried slack for video and screen share (I can only view in chrome on Linux, but that was enough for today). Slack was stable, clear, didn't drop and didn't heat up computers like Hangouts. Our two failed attempts on hangouts were right before trying slack.

We have on our list to request early access to Hangout Meet (if that is the right name).

We have a remote team, all with average home connections. The ironic part is when we try to have a meeting with the office and their network is the issue and all of us at home are still on the call and seeing clearly seeing each other.

Re: Let employees work from home

#144

Post by jefe_ »

Was in a management meeting the other week where HR mentioned they were considering implementing a more official work-from-home policy. What we're trying to get away from is hourly employees 'working from home' when really they're sick, by offering formalized remote work opportunities. Sounded great until they mentioned the 'monitoring systems' they were evaluating. I shared my very strong opposition to the proposed monitoring systems, went home and crafted a Less-Orwellian Remote Office policy. Shared the policy with HR the next day, and they really liked it, agreeing there were ways to accomplish the goals without surveillance.

Writing the policy was trickier than I expected. Started very much with a spirit of 'Hire people you trust,' but thinking about the policy, applied to specific people who have been hired, it brought some more specific guidelines to the policy. Here are the highlights:

Eligibility for Remote Work (pick 4 from: 1 year with company, management status, strong performance record or recommendation from team lead, one department-specific criteria)

Requirements for the Remote Office (minimum equipment, ample space, etc. clearly defined)

Approval Process & Remote Work Guidelines / Contract (lays out guidelines for working remotely and collects employee commitment to adhere)

Saw some commentary that the frequency of working from home shouldn't be a privilege (i.e. if you do a good job, you can work from home for a week), that it should be as routine as possible, so we're making eligibility to work remotely, on a set frequency, an attainable privilege (so it can be revoked if necessary).

For the alternatives to surveillance, we will be implementing some improved communication tools, and departments will be adopting the concept of an ultra-brief daily scrum.

Tried to keep it lean, will be interesting to see where it excels and where it can improve.

Re: Let employees work from home

#145

Post by bitL »

korzun wrote: post #142
bitL wrote: post #117

The crab mentality here is really appalling :-( I work remotely for 6+ years; during that time I created some unique algorithms, traveled around the world, met diverse types of people giving me unexpected inspirations from which business benefited tremendously (unique stuff nobody else has). I have the big 4 companies trying to contact me all the time if I wouldn't want to work for them, however seeing inside e.g. cr…

You are an exception. I was a huge advocate for working from home because I would get things done and end up saving two hours of commute. Your perception of this approach changes relatively quickly in a managerial role. If you are shaving 1-2 hours off your commute, then the overall output should be in line with whatever it was in the office. I probably met two other engineers that kept that in check.

It's not for everyone. You can often see middle-aged men escaping their homes and working long hours because they feel miserable around their wives; for them office is the only "safe space" they have. But for self-motivated high-performing communicative people WFH might be a much better arrangement. They might have a different problem - not knowing when to stop and risking a severe burnout which would be limited by office hours.

Re: Let employees work from home

#146

Post by Mz »

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…

So, my first thought was Textbroker. But then I searched and couldn't even find a Wikipedia article profiling them, though I did find this: https://techcrunch.com/2010/10/24/textbroker-raises-multi-mi...

And then it occurred to me that their thousands of writers are not employees. They are 1099 contract positions.

And then I remembered the awful stuff that went down when the Fortune 500 company I worked for created WFH positions for my exact job. It was a big fat nope for me for reasons that boiled down to the company invading my home and trying to control my life in ways I found highly objectionable. And then thing got worse as it went along because they put your quota 30% higher if you worked from home for no real reason. This was literally a figure pulled out of thin air by a person high up in the department.

When they found that people were working 11 hours a day and this was a violation of the law on their end, rather than lower the quota, they just got psycho controlling about how many hours a day you could be logged in. So I guess at that point people needed to log off to go pee in order to preserve the 8 hours a day of work time they were allotted.

This has me thinking that there may be deeper systemic issues with the very concept of a WFH employee than just "Well, it is new and different and weird and it just needs good PR." Perhaps the (apparent) Textbroker model is the actual sane thing: If you want to work from home, you get a contract position and are not classified as an employee.

Re: Let employees work from home

#147

Post by solatic »

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…

Imagine if this strategy was applied to anything outside of business. Let's take the civil rights movement, and argue that the reason why a country isn't ending slavery and then racism and the sexism etc. is because no other country has managed to empirically prove that protecting civil rights is the foundation to national prosperity. And we just utterly dismissed out of hand everybody sitting in and marching and being civilly disobedient in the name of ending injustice.

What the WFH movement needs isn't proof, because you're not going to get proof without first having activists. And if companies like Basecamp and Automattic aren't wildly sucessful, is not evidence against WFH, because clearly WFH is not the sole determinant of business growth and success.

Re: Let employees work from home

#148

Post by megamindbrian »

jefe_ wrote: post #144

Was in a management meeting the other week where HR mentioned they were considering implementing a more official work-from-home policy. What we're trying to get away from is hourly employees 'working from home' when really they're sick, by offering formalized remote work opportunities. Sounded great until they mentioned the 'monitoring systems' they were evaluating. I shared my very strong opposition to the proposed…

I have a very strong opinion that the "evaluation systems" should be built for EMPLOYEES to use, not middle managers. A system that provides insights in to how you spend your time would be extremely useful to me. For example, if I wanted to sum up the total hours that I spend on a project, I have kept pretty decent track in Google calendar of when I am working. I have to go to a third part and upload my calendar dump to them, they convert the ICS to an Excel spreadsheet where I can finally do some addition if the duration field is properly formatted. Modern monitoring tools are the opposite of this approach and they are all built for some ephemeral opinion of what data matters to employers who can't decide what to do even if they had all the employee data in the world.

Re: Let employees work from home

#149

Post by dade_ »

bitL wrote: post #145
korzun wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are an exception. I was a huge advocate for working from home because I would get things done and end up saving two hours of commute. Your perception of this approach changes relatively quickly in a managerial role. If you are shaving 1-2 hours off your commute, then the overall output should be in line with whatever it was in the office. I probably met two other engineers that kept that in check.

It's not for everyone. You can often see middle-aged men escaping their homes and working long hours because they feel miserable around their wives; for them office is the only "safe space" they have. But for self-motivated high-performing communicative people WFH might be a much better arrangement. They might have a different problem - not knowing when to stop and risking a severe burnout which would be limited by o…

I have seen this too, but it turns out they also hide from their wife at the bar afterward.

Re: Let employees work from home

#150

Post by eip »

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…

Intel not big enough for you?
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