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Why Do We Still Commute?

citylab.com

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Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#251

Post by sh87 »

saas_co_de wrote: post #208
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.…

The vast majority of time spent by office employees is socializing and non-productive ritual work. Since the purpose of going to the office is not to do actual work being able to work from home has not removed the need for the office.

I feel most management folks box reportees into ‘talkers’ and ‘doers’. I see a lot more talkers these days being encouraged at the expense of the doers.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#252

Post by DeathRabbit »

Anecdotal evidence: I'm a software architect/developer. The last three companies I've been with do not support remote work on a large scale because the IT Leadership did not want to fight against the managers of the departments who logistically _couldn't_ work from home.

Anecdotal, but I doubt I'm the only one where this is true, the mentality of "if we all can't do it no one can".

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#253

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

marcc wrote: post #248
saas_co_de wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of time spent by office employees is socializing and non-productive ritual work. Since the purpose of going to the office is not to do actual work being able to work from home has not removed the need for the office.

The vast majority of time spent by office employees is socializing and non-productive ritual work. Do you have any links or sources to back this up?

From a UK Bureau of Labor and Stats study, the average office worker is only productive for ~3 hours/day. People spend the majority of their time surfing the internet, socializing, eating/drinking, and looking for a new job. I wonder if it's worse in east asian countries where no one leaves before the boss.

Source: https://www.vouchercloud.com/blog/office-worker-productivity...

The last time I worked in an office, I got most of my work done in the morning or after 6pm when no one was in the office.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#254

Post by sh87 »

marcc wrote: post #248
saas_co_de wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of time spent by office employees is socializing and non-productive ritual work. Since the purpose of going to the office is not to do actual work being able to work from home has not removed the need for the office.

The vast majority of time spent by office employees is socializing and non-productive ritual work. Do you have any links or sources to back this up?

I can vouch for that statement. A daily standup that exceeds 30 mins, a grooming and planning meeting that extends all 8 hours of a day in a sprint with unclear stories, surprise bug triage meetings ranging between 30 mins to 2 hrs, meetings where I cant possibly contribute, updating user stories with questions about the story, convincing people on why we shouldn’t be working on backend and ui without well defined contracts all account for over 30% to 60% of my time on a team with over 4 members.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#255

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

rayvd wrote: post #246
imgabe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm not following. Companies do pay for this. Via salary...

? Hourly workers who live further away dont get paid more.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#256

Post by PeterStuer »

duckmysick wrote: post #213

I have a practical question about organizing remote jobs. How do you deal with the security aspects of working remotely - especially if the work deals with sensitive data or code? In a regular office setting everyone is connected to a same network that sits behind a firewall (or in extreme cases it's just an intranet with no outside access) with tightly controlled permissions. How can it be translated to a remote env…

Many people have a VPN with 2-Factor authentication, in some cases even then all work is done over remote desktop.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#257

Post by sh87 »

I see most work places tend to sway ‘remote heavy’ or ‘commute heavy’. Too much either way is clearly not working out. Like all efficient mechanisms, I think the key is to allow a certain degree of flexibility and handing it over to the employee to make what he/she can from it. Maybe a pilot program just to see how it fits into the company culture ?

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#258

Post by PeterStuer »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #33

To a lot of people 2hr/day commuting is less terrible than the trade-offs associated with living closer to the city.

2 hours a day. You spend about 9 hours at the office, you sleep 8 hours (hopefully), household chores, including shopping food etc will take you an hour (probably more, but let's say). So this leaves you with 4 hours a day 'free'. Wokring from home would net you a massive 50% increase in 'free' time. Talk about QoL improbvement.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#259

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

BeetleB wrote: post #198
PeterStuer wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that they probably are also not afraid to use that 'full bandwidth', disrupting everyone workflow, repeatedly, like calling an hour long team status update meeting for a communication that could have perfectly occurred in a 2 line email message. Which you'll also receive. Oh yeah, who's taking the minutes by the way?

>And that they probably are also not afraid to use that 'full bandwidth', disrupting everyone workflow, repeatedly, like calling an hour long team status update meeting for a communication that could have perfectly occurred in a 2 line email message. To be frank, people using IM to communicate with me disrupt my flow a lot more. They start a thread/conversation/request, and then are slow to respond, or disappear. You…

>They start a thread/conversation/request, and then are slow to respond, or disappear.

That's the primary benefit of qorking remotely IMO. Not having to immediately stop everything im doing allows me to stay in flow state. It also improves the quality of my responses and solutions since i can let the request percolate in my head. Usually, I come up better answers when Im not actively thinking

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#260

Post by bluGill »

marcosdumay wrote: post #221
bluGill wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best managers are the ones who know they don't know how to do your job so they get out of your way. The worst are those who don't know how to do your job and get in the way. Those who know how to do your job at least don't get in the way when they help.

Ideally, they would both know how to do your job, and get out of the way.

No, ideally they know how to do their job well and do that instead of getting in your way.

Your boss doens't need to know how to do your job.

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