111–120 of 400 posts
I think working from home works perfectly if you know exactly what to fill your workday with or if you're in a position where you can make decisions smoothly. If you're not sure what's expected of you or your team has poor communication, remote work seems to lead to some issues, such as being unsure if you're doing enough, feeling more guilty about slacking (even if a break is needed) and an increased amount of block…
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Right, except the elephant in the room isn't laziness or the value of face to face interaction, it's trust. The driver of this lack of trust is the rise of managers (e.g. MBAs) who have limited expertise in the fields which they manage. For jobs where there are measures of performance that are accurate and not gameable (e.g. certain call center workers) and/or it is a job executives probably reckon that they could do…
I don't understand why you are being downvoted. I just started working as a software developer 10 months ago and my supervisor had told me the work culture has changed so much since upper management has transitioned to MBAs and previous military over promoting workers from within who have worked on projects. I doubt that the government will allow any remote work any time soon because most of the people here have neve…
We live in a post Snowden world. It only takes one mistake to have all your data out in the wild.
I think attributing changes away from trusting employees to simply "bad management" and ignoring issues like employee malfeasance... is overly simplistic and dilutes complicated issue conversations.
There needs to be a balance between trust and security. It's easy to take it too far in either direction.
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I don't believe your "commute" constitutes a commute in the sense of what this article is about. Your commute is just a walk. People traveling for 30-90 (or more!) minutes to and from work, particularly the ones driving in traffic, are the commuters. And the ones I know that fall into that category hate it. Good for you that you have such a nice situation, though!
I actually commute by public transport. The 30 minute walk is something I do because I find it a nice way to start the day. Instead of changing busses, I just walk the last 2-3 km.
I tend to work two days a week from home and commute a bit under two hours one way the other days. I agree with the above quote from the article. Usually, the complexity of my team's tasks are at a level where some face to face early in the week and some remote screen share + video call later in the week are sufficient. We are currently working through a complex bug and I have came into the office on the days I'd normally be remote. It helped. The connectivity of interpersonal relationships is easier to build in person, and so I subscribe to the notion that a minimal amount of time in the office is a good thing if you need a team that works great together. I feel that time varies on how well the team is bonded. With my last team, a day or two a week face to face would be good. With my brand new team where we are still forming and norming, more days all together makes sense.
If I worked remotely, I would do that 5 hour stint, make breakfast and play with the kids, then do a gym / coffee shop routine for 3 or so more hours to finish up work for the day.
And managers are afraid they'll appear superfluous when they can't walk around disturbing people all day.
Hundreds of years ago, Mozart was said to have traveled more than the vast majority of his contemporaries. Today, the average person travels more miles than Mozart every day! To sit in a chair.
Think of the waste in terms of energy. Not only has there been an explosion in population, but each person is expending more energy than ever on these things. And why?
Because economics. For one, suburban sprawl happens because commercial areas get gentrified so people choose to live farther from their job. UBI would fix a lot of this, allowing local workers to live and work near their job.
We commute because businesses can push off the cost of commuting to their employees. I'd personally be in favor of a "congestion tax" or somesuch for companies that force their employees to come in rather than work remotely. Commuting takes up energy and resources, and the congestion incurs costs on third parties (car accidents, higher gas prices, and the like). While it's debatable whether remote works for businesse…
I've thought about this in the past. What if companies had to pay for the time you spend commuting? They'd have an incentive to hire people as close as possible, and support local policies that make it easier to live closer to work. On the other hand, employees would have an incentive to try to stretch out their commute as much as possible, to get extra pay for time "not working". I don't know how rampant that would…
I work from home as much as I can, but nothing trumps seeing your colleagues face to face. Text can also cause misunderstandings, and apparently no one likes video, at least in my company. I don't like video much either, though.
I also hate video. Ugh. I don't know why I love face to face but hate video :/
It also means you have to stop what you're doing, sit down and talk to your screen. I like being able to stand up, or go grab something more than a meter away, take a walk or make coffee while I talk to someone. If I vanish from sight, the other parties on the video call don't know if I'm still listening. Heck, even if you can see the person, you don't know if their sound is still working properly, so there's more "can you still hear me?" and "sorry, you cut out for a moment there, can you repeat yourself" sorts of interactions as well.
Video's a pretty bad substitute for real world face-to-face.
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You make it sound like he doesn't have a choice in the matter, which is extremely unlikely and also very sad.
One needs to remember that there are many more factors at play. Sometimes the only place you can afford a decent size family home will be in an area with lower wages. Hence it can make economical sense to have to take a higher paying job that requires travel in order to afford to provide for your family. There are many factors at play in such decisions. "Having a choice" is something you do not always have depending…
We would be well served by demonstrating compassion for others -- it's not like a majority of people can simply jump on their fixie with their Manhattan Portage bag and just enjoy a 5 minute ride to a DUMBO loft office.