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People love working remotely

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Re: People love working remotely

#141

Post by kps »

g051051 wrote: post #45
codingdave wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a 15 minute fact-to-face is better... Good thing we have better tools for videoconferencing than ever. I can have a 15 minute face-to-face with anyone in my company, no matter where in the world they are.

They cite this particular bit of idiocy from the Agile Manifesto: > The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation. They fail to realize that when it was written in 2001, communication technologies were far inferior to what we have now. So that face to face should be updated to something like "immediate" or "real time".

What they also failed to realize, which was also true then, is that the person I need a face-to-face conversation with is neither in the desk next to me nor at my employer's site the next country over: he was in my desk last year, works somewhere else now, and didn't write anything down because Agile™ told him it wasn't ‘effective’.

Re: People love working remotely

#142

Post by nickjj »

I've been working remotely for my entire freelance career (~20 years). Very occasionally I'll go on site for certain local clients but that's not the norm.

There's huge wins for working remotely that everyone has already stated but the isolation factor is real, especially if you're single.

It might seem fun for a while (couple of months) to not wear pants at work and be able to put in 4 super productive hours of work before 10am if you wake up early and those are great things but I have to wonder if working remotely has long term mental health issues.

To get human interaction I force myself to leave the house (I walk a few times a day for exercise), have some friends and hobbies, run errands etc. but it's not the same as being out of the house for 8-10+ hours a day. I'd like to see a test done on single people who have been working remotely for 5+ years and seeing if they have higher levels of general anxiety than anyone working a job where they need to commute full time.

Even if you have a private office where you spend 95% of your time alone for ~8 hours, that's so much different (arguably better) than not leaving your house or apartment except for occasional short duration activities.

Re: People love working remotely

#143

Post by ebiester »

jayd16 wrote: post #128
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…

I'm not sure about the 15 minute meetings that could have been emails, however, I will say that pair programming and XP are useful tools. I'm not sure how easy that is to replicate in a fully remote office.

It's easier in a fully remote office. I've paired with people across the ocean using tools like Zoom and committing continuously. When specialty software is required, I've also worked on a common AWS instance used as a desktop with the driver connecting to the instance to type.

Re: People love working remotely

#144

Post by pojzon »

patagonia wrote: post #121

To those complaining about the commute. You’re complaining about city and transportation architecture, not workplace design. We are social creatures. I don’t understand the complete lack of addressing the issue: 8 hours a day I’m cut off from people except virtually. Prisons that force virtual visitation are criticized for this exact issue.

I would not agree. I simply loath the open space office..

We are cramped up like industry workers in 1880.. Yes we are social creatures and we need DIFFERENT levels of interaction with others. BUT we are not cattle to cramp us up desk to desk.

Re: People love working remotely

#145

Post by umvi »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #80
cs02rm0 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

I mean... sometimes you need to course-correct, no? And cross pollination is useful, isn't it?

"Just Shut Up And Get It Done" workflow means that people might be spinning their wheels building the wrong thing (or duplicate things) in their silos.

Come on, there's got to be a few meetings to synchronize vision, scope, etc. within a team.

Re: People love working remotely

#146

Post by buboard »

patagonia wrote: post #121

To those complaining about the commute. You’re complaining about city and transportation architecture, not workplace design. We are social creatures. I don’t understand the complete lack of addressing the issue: 8 hours a day I’m cut off from people except virtually. Prisons that force virtual visitation are criticized for this exact issue.

> You’re complaining about city and transportation architecture, not workplace design.

More like, complaining that the whole design of modern city life is around work. As more and more people work remotely, cities will change, habits will change. People who work at home have been largely neglected for decades; we feel out of sync with cities and other people, almost marginalized. This has to change.

Re: People love working remotely

#147

Post by moate »

spurdoman77 wrote: post #49
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…

Once a remote worker frauded a company I was working for a large amount of money. I dont think it was a coincidence that it was a remote worker - I believe it is much easier mentally to behave unethically if you dont see the people f2f you are hurting with your actions.

I don't believe this is supported at all by anything. You see fraud cases perpetrated by all types of workers: warehouse employees "losing" a box, office drones abusing leave policies, CEOs raiding the corporate coffers. People inclined to commit fraud are inclined to commit fraud relative to their position, but it's unlikely the position itself is the driving factor.

Re: People love working remotely

#148

Post by okmokmz »

patagonia wrote: post #121

To those complaining about the commute. You’re complaining about city and transportation architecture, not workplace design. We are social creatures. I don’t understand the complete lack of addressing the issue: 8 hours a day I’m cut off from people except virtually. Prisons that force virtual visitation are criticized for this exact issue.

You're really comparing prisons that only allow virtual communication to working remotely? Lets brainstorm a list of ways that you can see people while working from home that you couldn't from prison.

1. If you have any family members that will be home throughout the day you can see them

2. You can step outside and talk to your neighbors

3. You can take a 10 minute break to walk to a local store/park

4. You can go out to lunch at restaurant

5. You can invite anyone to come over at any time

6. Before and after work, you can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, and see anyone you want as well as on weekends

So it seems it's not quite like a prison... not to mention you can also call, text, video chat, IM, or communicate virtually at any time rather than only during certain periods of time with certain people as told by the prison.

Also, if you're working in an office, how much time are you actually spending socializing and interacting with coworkers vs getting your work done?

I understand that some people have a need to interact with people daily, but many of us prefer the quiet/isolation while we work, and comparing remote work to prison is ridiculous

Re: People love working remotely

#149

Post by mixmastamyk »

wolco wrote: post #104
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…

Happened to me. What I did was go into the office and constantly talk to the vp's and ceo. Not about anything important really boring weather/how are you doing? The more removed the person from my department the more I would go out of my way to talk to them. Start asking difficult questions at the all staff forums. Always threw in doubts in meetings with non-tech people. I asked for a special chair for my back. Start…

Waste their time... quite diabolical. ((tips hat))

Re: People love working remotely

#150

Post by CGamesPlay »

patagonia wrote: post #121

To those complaining about the commute. You’re complaining about city and transportation architecture, not workplace design. We are social creatures. I don’t understand the complete lack of addressing the issue: 8 hours a day I’m cut off from people except virtually. Prisons that force virtual visitation are criticized for this exact issue.

People are in prisons for substantially longer than 8 hours / day and don’t take weekends off. I don’t think equating “being alone working for 8 hours” to “a prison with only virtual visits” is helpful.
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