201–210 of 228 posts
This article essentially boiled down to: I want X. A few companies already offer X. You should offer X too. There are sometimes advantages to offering full or partial work-from-home options to employees. For some projects and company cultures, it can work well. But honestly, this blog post was a rather shallow argument in favor of it.
How about a summary of "Both options should exist on an equal footing for the employees to choose"?
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…
For you. But not everyone works like that.
Here is a scenario for you: you're a manager at a company that does not have a remote culture in place. You have ten employees on your team. Two of them want to work remotely. You let them.
I'm interested in hearing how you would resolve these issues:
1. The remote employees now feel left out because even though on paper they are video conferenced in to all team meetings, important insights or decisions are happening in organic social discussions for which it is awkward or simply not worth it to start a video chat? What happens when everyone in the same room gets involved in a conversation that was started by two of the in-office employees talking about a weekend project, and they decide to port a discovery to their current software?
2. Some of the in-office employees start to find it cumbersome and annoying to communicate with the remote employees. They hate video conference software. They're reluctant to reach out to the remote employees because they know they have to set up a video call. Video conferences become prone to connection issues. Conversations that would normally be a five or ten minute check in with your peer in the same room become 30 or 40 minute asynchronous conversations over Slack.
3. Some of the in-office or remote employees encounter a lot of friction in communication, because they don't really know how to interpret tone over Slack. Video conferencing remains a pain in the ass, and some people simply don't want to do it.
I work remotely. I like it a lot. But I think your characterization of many of the comments here as a "crab mentality" is unfair. Not everyone wants to work remotely on a beach and not everyone focuses well or has the same discipline like you. Far more importantly, companies that don't already have remote cultures have employees that don't really want to work with remote employees for both rational and irrational reasons. It is a complex business problem to implement a functional remote culture for all involved.
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…
> Remote work requires focus and discipline. Focus is way easier than in an open office, discipline is more difficult. For you. But not everyone works like that. Here is a scenario for you: you're a manager at a company that does not have a remote culture in place. You have ten employees on your team. Two of them want to work remotely. You let them. I'm interested in hearing how you would resolve these issues: 1. The…
2. Some of in-office employees find it cumbersome and annoying to sit next to loud and obnoxious coworkers. They find they can not get any work done around them. Why should we cater to some employees and not others?
3. Video conferencing is not a pain in the ass. At my job, it's a simple as "create skype meeting" on outlook. Everyone clicks link, done. Or if it's more adhoc-open chat, call, share screen. Done.
I've yet to see a good reason why good employees can not work from home, other than, your company is just poorly managed and can't handle it.
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> You need very good workers and leaders in a remote company. I think that's a point that some people miss. To have remote workers, you need people who can effectively work remotely. It's a learned skill, like any other, and not everyone will be good at it. Saying "we're only local" or "we're only remote" is a bad idea, you can have both and call it a win on both ends.
"Saying "we're only local" or "we're only remote" is a bad idea, you can have both and call it a win on both ends" Honestly, I think it needs to be one or the other. Mixing some remote people into an otherwise local team often doesn't work.
The fact is WFH does not need to be a full time thing for most companies. Just offer it as a benefit-if you want, you can work from home 2 days a week, or WFH if you need to be home to pick up a package or have a doctors appointment.
That alone will make your company much more attractive.
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.
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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.
I'm the first person to admit that if I was to run a company, I wouldn't allow people to work remotely only. But as an employee, there's no way I'm going to drag my ass into an office ever again on a regular basis, when I can just as well work from exotic beachfront homes. This is going to work out just like companies who cut compensation work out. You'll be left with the mediocre engineers and everyone who's able to…
Why not? I work remotely and if I was to run a company I would hire remotely too. Given that I've coded myself I expect to know how long tasks should generally take. And I would want to give that benefit to my employees and attract talent as well.
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Can we take into account some really big open source projects?
I think that's a great point, but I'd argue that one of the reasons that works well is that the developers are (typically) also the product owners, project managers, etc.
That's not necessarily something that companies couldn't adopt if it turned out to be a good way to run a remoting-based organization.
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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…
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I think companies need to accommodate the differences in people here; either within one company or within the industry they need to split into "office friendly" and "remote friendly" groups. I'm on the introvert side of things and I'm simply oversaturated with human interactions. I have to actively avoid being physically around other human beings just to keep my sanity. I recently managed to convince my boss to give…
I'm sensitive to the fact that you're more productive in an environment that caters to being an introvert. But if an organization were to allow people to work from home who asked to, how would they maintain the same overall productivity between groups? What if you want to work from home but your team believes there will be a productivity-reducing communication cost? How does the organization respond to this? Can it b…
Teams that work in office already have productivity deltas between employees. This isn't communism-people are paid different amounts, they don't all work 100% and get paid the same. You reward the high performers, like you'd do anyway. Regardless of if it's WFH or not.