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Let employees work from home

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Re: Let employees work from home

#151

Post by e12e »

TimJYoung wrote: post #116
tzs wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The days when people were trained on newsgroup netiquette are long gone. I've never understood why private news servers and groups never caught on. Company newsgroups on a company news server seem to me to often make a lot more sense than company mailing lists on a company mail server or company forums on phpBBB or similar. News readers generally do a much better job than mail client of organizing discussions into…

It was the first choice for many companies. In the Delphi development world (starting in 1996), NNTP was pervasive and almost every company related to the 3rd party ecosystem ran an NNTP server (we still do, it provides both NNTP and web access to the same message store). Believe it or not, the issue wasn't as much the servers not being maintained any more, it was the clients . Various clients, especially email clien…

Just a reminder that the d programming language forums are architected on the back of nntp:

https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed

Re: Let employees work from home

#152

Post by AlexB138 »

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…

> 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)

I'm guessing "pick 4" is a typo, since you only listed four criteria, but "management status" strikes me as odd. Assuming this means "be a manager to qualify for this option", which may be an entirely incorrect assumption, I think this is actually backwards. Managers are the people who need to be on site most. 80% of a managers job is interacting with people. Unless their entire team is remote, a manager should really be in the office to quickly handle issues as they come up and be available to their team as needed. Difficulty around effective communication is the biggest down side to remote work, in my opinion.

This strikes me as favoritism towards the managerial class, rather than an actual good policy. Otherwise, sounds like an interesting way to handle it.

Re: Let employees work from home

#155

Post by wonder_er »

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…

I think what works is companies losing employees to other companies who have realistic WFH policies.

So, the business success piece doesn't matter. Losing key employees will turn things around quite quickly.

Or it wont, and the business suffers, and maybe eventually fails, maybe eventually doesn't.

Re: Let employees work from home

#156

Post by kimsk112 »

"Everybody – EVERYBODY, I say – wants at least the option of work from home."

I think his sentence nails it. I also prefers working at the office and interacts with fellow developers either formally (meeting) or informally (water-cooler talk), but it makes no sense to force anyone to be at the office all the time.

I'd like the flexibility of working remotely out of country or WFH during rush hours and commute whenever I want. This really affects my decision to join or leave the company.

Re: Let employees work from home

#158

Post by alltakendamned »

kimsk112 wrote: post #156

"Everybody – EVERYBODY, I say – wants at least the option of work from home." I think his sentence nails it. I also prefers working at the office and interacts with fellow developers either formally (meeting) or informally (water-cooler talk), but it makes no sense to force anyone to be at the office all the time. I'd like the flexibility of working remotely out of country or WFH during rush hours and commute wheneve…

Everybody wants it, few can handle it in a responsible way for more than a few days per month.

Re: Let employees work from home

#159

Post by jbverschoor »

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…

Why do companies keep comparing themselves with the big guys? I guess it's why "bigdata" is so popular with all these small firms

Re: Let employees work from home

#160

Post by sqeaky »

tyingq wrote: post #48

Careful what you wish for. If your company works out a system where everyone can reliably work 100% remotely, you become a very replaceable cog. Replaceable from a much cheaper labor pool.

Why does working from home make someone more replaceable than someone working from an office?

I would think in most IT positions the thing that makes one least replaceable is their value to the team. If you constantly provide in the form of More code written or servers maintained because you can focus better then you could be more valuable. I don't think working from home directly relates to values, and I think arguments can be made for value increase or reduction.

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