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People love working remotely

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Re: People love working remotely

#71

Post by matwood »

peteey wrote: post #57
mpweiher wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're also "Agile" now, so we spend a ton of time in useless meetings. One of the crazier things that has happened. When the XP folk said "we do a standup", the idea was that meetings are useless and awful, you shouldn't have them, but if you're going to have them, then let's "encourage" brevity by having everyone stand. Add a few decades of agile certified consultants, sc(r)umification and now "agile" means "lots…

Agile and stand up meetings get a bad rap when poorly performing companies adopt the practices. There's no such thing as having just half of your house on fire. If a fundamental business element like customers or leadership is missing, everything else will be bad. Waterfall and agile methods are equally damned when the something else is causing a company to under perform.

> Agile and stand up meetings get a bad rap when poorly performing companies adopt the practices.

I was talking to the CTO of a large non-tech company and he was so excited how the whole development organization had adopted agile. Later he told me that after the conference he had to fly to a huge meeting where they plan and schedule out the next 6 months to a year of development work.

Re: People love working remotely

#72

Post by kemayo »

ken wrote: post #19

Elephant in the room: how many of these people would prefer it to having a private office ? Strangely, this article/survey/infographic never mentions that option. I'd prefer remote work, too, over sitting in an open floorplan office, but I'd much prefer an actual office to either one. The easy "why" is: despite all the drawbacks, a lot of us will do pretty much anything to get out of an open floorplan.

I work remote, and have for ~10 years. I'd take it over having a private office.

Of course, I've arranged my home space around this. I have an "office" at home, with a door and everything, where I can work. I still do a hefty amount of my working in coffee shops, though, which is somewhat akin to the open office experience. I also preferred remote working back when I first started it, and was just occupying my kitchen table or couch.

If I was in SF and thus able to access our office, I might well go in sometimes. But I suspect we'd top out at once a week, or when I really wanted to catch up on that hot nonprofit gossip. Commutes really are horrible things.

Re: People love working remotely

#73

Post by mcpeepants »

Nursie wrote: post #14

I work remotely 2 days a week. I'd quite like to go to 3 and might soon. But without being in the office a couple of days a week for collaboration, a lot of stuff just wouldn't work. Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours. I'd definitely recommend partial remote working. Not sure I'd want it fully.

> Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours

I don't doubt this is a real challenge for certain teams or types of work. However, in 5+ years of working remotely at fully-distributed orgs I have never experienced this. Not once have I encountered a scenario where being in a room together would have dramatically changed/improved/whatever the discussion. Perhaps it just comes down to having a team that can communicate effectively without being face-to-face, but this always interested me as a common criticism of remote work.

Re: People love working remotely

#74

Post by matwood »

ken wrote: post #19

Elephant in the room: how many of these people would prefer it to having a private office ? Strangely, this article/survey/infographic never mentions that option. I'd prefer remote work, too, over sitting in an open floorplan office, but I'd much prefer an actual office to either one. The easy "why" is: despite all the drawbacks, a lot of us will do pretty much anything to get out of an open floorplan.

Floor plan and commute. I love remote work, but would be perfectly fine going to the office every day if I could afford to live less than a 10 minute walk away and had a private/small shared team office. Since neither of those is likely, remote work all the way.

Re: People love working remotely

#75

Post by matwood »

cylinder wrote: post #70
ken wrote: post #19

Elephant in the room: how many of these people would prefer it to having a private office ? Strangely, this article/survey/infographic never mentions that option. I'd prefer remote work, too, over sitting in an open floorplan office, but I'd much prefer an actual office to either one. The easy "why" is: despite all the drawbacks, a lot of us will do pretty much anything to get out of an open floorplan.

I'd take private office and casual dress code over work from home. I live close to the city with a great commute but don't have space for a home office at home.

> casual dress code

Haven't seen this as an issue for awhile. I'm old enough that when I started programming I had to wear a tie to work (it wasn't a 'tech' company). Over time and different jobs it changed to golf shirts and khakis to now where if anyone wears more than shorts/jeans and a t-shirt we think they are going on an interview.

Re: People love working remotely

#76

Post by vidanay »

spurdoman77 wrote: post #64
ReptileMan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. For me commute is the most pointlessly wasted time a person could do. And I have played lineage. So as long as your commute is 10 seconds home office beats real any time. At least until we get the whole teleportation thing nailed down.

I like combining my commute with workout. Cycle, run or walk to work. Especially running to work in the morning gives me very nice energy for the day.

This is only an option for most people if there are locker/shower facilities at the office (most do not have this)

Re: People love working remotely

#77

Post by throwaway242221 »

cheez wrote: post #35
throwaway242221 wrote: post #30

I "love" it in the sense that I can get paid while watching Netflix, playing games and do whatever I want. I instantly start slacking off and all my working hours become a game to make it look like I'm working when I'm not. This doesn't happen when I'm in a office where I'm "forced" to work. Yeah, you can slack off at the office as well but why? I obviously can't do any meaningful leisure activities there. And yes, i…

Found the manager.

So it's completely unbelievable that working from home makes some people (some, not all) slacking instead of working? I believe in remote work but it's not just for everyone like so many people seem to believe. I'm a living example of a dysfunctional remote worker.

Re: People love working remotely

#78

Post by Nursie »

mcpeepants wrote: post #73
Nursie wrote: post #14

I work remotely 2 days a week. I'd quite like to go to 3 and might soon. But without being in the office a couple of days a week for collaboration, a lot of stuff just wouldn't work. Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours. I'd definitely recommend partial remote working. Not sure I'd want it fully.

> Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours I don't doubt this is a real challenge for certain teams or types of work. However, in 5+ years of working remotely at fully-distributed orgs I have never experienced this. Not once have I encountered a scenario where being in a room together would have dramatic…

> Perhaps it just comes down to having a team that can communicate effectively

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if you are working in a more functional team than the one I'm consulting/contracting with right now. I'm not going to name the organisation when I'm bad-mouthing them so much, but there are systemic problems going right up to the top.

If you asked me to name somewhere with smart, competent people throughout the org, working well within a lightweight but functional agile delivery process, I wouldn't name the folks I'm with right now. There are a handful of competent developers (all the devs really) and one or two decent ops guys, but everyone from the PO to the Security Architect, to the QA folks is a walking disaster zone, poor communication being a big part of the problem.

I'm just glad delivery comes relatively soon and I'm not trying to build a career with them...

Re: People love working remotely

#79

Post by duiker101 »

ken wrote: post #19

Elephant in the room: how many of these people would prefer it to having a private office ? Strangely, this article/survey/infographic never mentions that option. I'd prefer remote work, too, over sitting in an open floorplan office, but I'd much prefer an actual office to either one. The easy "why" is: despite all the drawbacks, a lot of us will do pretty much anything to get out of an open floorplan.

A private office is the worst of both worlds for me. I have to go to the office, be out of everything that is comfortable for me, to be closed in an office for most of my day? No thanks!

Re: People love working remotely

#80

Post by ilikehurdles »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #39
g051051 wrote: post #16

I was full-time WFH for 6 wonderful years. I was happy, my productivity was off the charts, I was saving tons of money because I didn't have to spend it on my car and clothes, I had extra time that I wasn't wasting on my commute, etc. Then, we had a big shake-up. A bunch of senior people left, and new "leadership" came in to "transform" our workplace. All WFH was cancelled in our division (in spite of still being off…

We're also "Agile" now, so we spend a ton of time in useless meetings. Might be lost in translation - but agile shouldn't require a ton of meeting time and should work fine remotely. And hey, one of the principles is that you give teams the environment they need to get the job done, not the environment management thinks they deserve. Unless you mean "Agile" as, say, UK government terms it, also known as waterfall. In…

Agile introduces and requires meeting time. If you were doing Just Shut Up And Get It Done before, Agile is definitely meeting-heavy. Agile is agile compared to Waterfall, but overall it’s a process of no one trusting the workers to take on work and hit deadlines if they’re not in meetings telling you about it.

The only constant between every Agile organization I’ve been in is the forced meetings. Everything else was up to interpretation.

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