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Why Do We Still Commute?

citylab.com

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Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#131

Post by bitwize »

Because it's part of your job.

There is much, much more to your job than what's in the job description. For starters, you have to make your manager happy, so he can feel justified in continuing to pay you. Showing up at the office on time -- early in the morning -- is a form of virtue signalling. It's used as a proxy for self-discipline and reliability -- traits valued in an employee.

Yeah, yeah, I know. "My deliverables should be the only proxy I need; as long as I'm getting my work done I should be able to work from anywhere." It's one of those subtle psychological things. It takes a long history -- longer than the average Hackernews's career at any one place -- of deliverables shipped on time and under budget before the manager will feel confident you're reliable enough to deliver guaranteed value when called upon to do so. Showing up on time increases their confidence in you and decreases the chance that they will wake up one morning and decide you no longer merit that generous tech-bubble paycheck.

So cowboy up, set your alarm for 6 AM, and get to work early.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#132

Post by sethammons »

gerardflo wrote: post #76
majewsky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your boss. I had plenty water cooler conversations with mine.

I would say that is not professional. If there is anything work related, you book a meeting and then discuss. For this reason I know few people are on the look out when to go get the water without stumbling upon a boss or a manager, because they take it as a harassment. This adds huge amount of stress and knocks the productivity. Workplaces with "we are big family" approach are the worse. This should be illegal.

That is bizzare. Here is how it works where I am at. You are in the kitchen getting a snack, drink, or eating or whatnot and a conversation strikes up. You mention a problem you are facing, they offer a solution or idea. Boom. Progress. On harder problems, these organically grow to brainstorm sessions. This can be with anyone in the org from new developer to someone who used to work on that system to ops to c-level exec to founder of the company. After all is said and done, it is up to the individuals to be mature and communicate discoveries or insights to the rest of the team. This will happen at scrum or via email. Sometimes a real meeting gets set up when there are others who need to be in the discussion and an email thread won't cut it. The only times it is a pain for us is when those in a different office forget to communicate outward which is not very often. I can only think of two times that it was apparent that water cooler conversations did not bubble up but still led critical designs at an inter-team level. And we are open enough to call out the lapse and work towards it not happening more often. I would not like working at a place where I had to stop communication in the kitchen and book a meeting for work related talk.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#133

Post by vog »

codingdave wrote: post #81

I worked from home for five years, and just this week started back into a job where I commute to an office. I don't love the commute, but I also don't agree that working from home is a universally better answer for me on a personal level. Everyone knows the benefits of working from home, but there are downsides as well. Fixable downsides, but they exist nonetheless -- it is easy to become a hermit. Easy to over-work.…

> it is easy to become a hermit. Easy to over-work. Hard to draw the line between your work time and your personal time

Not just that, but there's also the other side: Easy to procrastinate, easy to give false reports which then leads to regular overwork in the days just before a hard deadline.

I know these issues from remote workers I worked with, but also know this personally while working on my Diploma theses.

While we are at it: Working on Diploma/Master thesis is in many ways very similar to remote work: One works mostly from home, maybe in the library but even there mostly alone, i.e. not in an office, meeting one's mentor at most once per week. I met with other students which were in the same situation - just to get into a group feeling. That worked quite well, even though we had no overlaps in our topics and hence not much to talk about.

The situation is a bit different if you write your PhD thesis, as that usually means you have a job at the university during that time, and at least have an office and collegues.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#134

Post by TomK32 »

codingdave wrote: post #81

I worked from home for five years, and just this week started back into a job where I commute to an office. I don't love the commute, but I also don't agree that working from home is a universally better answer for me on a personal level. Everyone knows the benefits of working from home, but there are downsides as well. Fixable downsides, but they exist nonetheless -- it is easy to become a hermit. Easy to over-work.…

I manages 7 years and will start an office job on Monday which I'm looking forward for: collegues and stuff like that is something I missed a lot.

The commute? 10 minutes on the bicycle. There's a song by Tripod about the distances between home, work and shops being your triangle of hapiness. Not that serious, but it has some substance of truth https://3pod.bandcamp.com/track/triangle-of-happiness

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#135

Post by sethammons »

BjoernKW wrote: post #14

I think that the 'importance of face-to-face interaction' argument is a helplessly contrived one, an attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. What's markedly different about environments that successfully adopted remote work are aspects like: - a lack of cargo cult work organisation and office pol…

The article has links to studies that say face to face is important for complex problems. What is your counter aside from saying there are examples supporting your view? Source? (I would link the links here but am on mobile and running late)

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#136

Post by pixl97 »

r2dnb wrote: post #96
Chiba-City wrote: post #56

Conversations around whiteboards between stakeholders creates value. Pair programming makes for lower defects and more reliable scheduling. Software is a design delivery operation. There was recent article on MS office space redesign to create more value. We are never typing approximations to futures like the proverbial monkeys. Productivity is not per-keystroke. I have been paid extra to kill projects that never sho…

While I have nothing against MBAs, this is a typical example of what people call MBAish / corporate BS and why managerial profiles have gained a bad reputation here. It looks smart on the surface but scrutiny exposes non-sense. >Conversations around whiteboards between stakeholders creates value. Why ? Are whiteboards magic ? >Pair programming makes for lower defects and more reliable scheduling Putting aside the fac…

>Why ? Are whiteboards magic ?

Anecdotally, for the amount of problems I have seen them solve in short order. Yes. They force an idea in the mind to become concrete and logically digestible to other members of the party. If you can't draw it in a manner that other people understand, you don't understand the idea well enough yourself. It is also free flowing. Ideas can be added to and removed quickly with an interface that almost all humans have been taught to use since a young age. It only contains 3 parts. The pen, the board, and the eraser. No software with far too many options to understand. No weird bugs that crash in the middle of a presentation. Pictographs can transcend language barriers. Software sellers will never create such a simple product, there is little value added reason to.

So yea, if not magical, far better than its competition in portraying ideas.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#137

Post by BjoernKW »

dragonwriter wrote: post #125
BjoernKW wrote: post #14

I think that the 'importance of face-to-face interaction' argument is a helplessly contrived one, an attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. What's markedly different about environments that successfully adopted remote work are aspects like: - a lack of cargo cult work organisation and office pol…

> There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. There are extensive sets of studies that show all of that it generally doesn't, where it especially doesn't, and why it doesn't (which the article mentions.) Data > anecdote.

There are also studies that show otherwise, which the article - perhaps conveniently so - fails to mention:

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers...

http://www.cosocloud.com/press-release/connectsolutions-surv...

https://www.zenefits.com/blog/remote-employees-happier-and-m...

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#138

Post by psj »

codingdave wrote: post #81

I worked from home for five years, and just this week started back into a job where I commute to an office. I don't love the commute, but I also don't agree that working from home is a universally better answer for me on a personal level. Everyone knows the benefits of working from home, but there are downsides as well. Fixable downsides, but they exist nonetheless -- it is easy to become a hermit. Easy to over-work.…

This describes my experience very accurately. Eventually one can build one's life around the personal flexibility working at home offers, and that can add (even more) real resistance to change, even if change is what might be best.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#139

Post by lovich »

eptcyka wrote: post #100
rejschaap wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound like he doesn't have a choice in the matter, which is extremely unlikely and also very sad.

Do you not trust people to seek out and pick the optimal options for themselves?

The lesser of two evils is still, you know, evil

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#140

Post by BjoernKW »

sethammons wrote: post #135
BjoernKW wrote: post #14

I think that the 'importance of face-to-face interaction' argument is a helplessly contrived one, an attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. What's markedly different about environments that successfully adopted remote work are aspects like: - a lack of cargo cult work organisation and office pol…

The article has links to studies that say face to face is important for complex problems. What is your counter aside from saying there are examples supporting your view? Source? (I would link the links here but am on mobile and running late)

Here are a few that back up my view:

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers...

http://www.cosocloud.com/press-release/connectsolutions-surv...

https://www.zenefits.com/blog/remote-employees-happier-and-m...

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