291–295 of 295 posts
It suits me-- I'm more of a quiet, research-type worker.
But some of my friends are more 'cubicle hoppers' / social butterflies. I really don't think those folks would do well with it in the long term.
I wonder if this is related to the long commutes Americans have gotten used to. I'm not in the US, and while I would say I definitely appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from home (or from "not the office") every now and then, and I do like the present drop in meetings, I cannot fathom how people stay sane without a variety of other people around. My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like…
Extrovert / introvert. You're clearly more towards the extrovert part of the spectrum. Please try to have empathy for people on the introverted part of the spectrum who cannot fathom being forced into an office with tons of people distracting them all day every day. Heretofore they (save for a lucky few like me) have been forced to not just fathom it, but live it. The "half" of Americans mentioned in the article prob…
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The problem is 100% with the way software is developed these days. Every company trains their staff to be as unproductive as possible with open plan offices, all the productivity is coming from quantity over quality, with every hire and every hour of training reflecting that. Working from home is great if you have autonomy and can build a chunk of software with minimal oversight. But if your dev process revolves sole…
> And devs need to take on more responsibility, broaden their non-technical skillset, I've been trying to obtain more non-tech skills within various companies for years now, but I get nothing but more JIRA issues. At this point, I've come to the conclusion that the non-technical workers who deal with the business requirements, revenue, customer interaction, etc. do not want the tech folks to have any control over the…
So what ends up happening is instead of having one designer that helps design the look and feel of the app, and sets the direction for the devs if they need help aligning their work to it; instead you have 3 or 4 designers that get pedantic about every pixel on the screen and insert themselves into every stage of development. It's not the designer's fault, there's basically nothing else they can do to fill out 40 hours a week.
This is the huge problem with overhiring, it's so easy to just generate more work to fill out your work week, and work begets more work (especially for the devs, who are usually the only ones actually 'producing' on the team, so work flows down to them). So what happens is as soon as your team goes above capacity in a certain area, it affects development. And once somebody is on the team, it's really hard to remove them from the team. That's just human nature. Which is why it's so important to grow a team slowly and naturally, measuring the effect on the team and gauging team member's opinions at each step of the process.
When I start a project I want to start it with 1-3 people, and do not just the high level planning, but establish roles within the team at a low level. What will we be delivering day to day and what is our capacity? Then once you've got that you can hire conservatively around that. The 'usual' way of forming a team within a big business is complete bullshit. You're making all the decisions up front and trying to read the tea leaves about what your project is going to look like in 6, 12 or 18 months.
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Well, here are two things to think about that may salve your fears: 1) There are just as many extroverts as introverts. You are very much not alone in your desires. 2) Management is overwhelmingly extroverts, because of the people managing required in the management profession. The C-Suite is almost entirely extroverts.
> because of the people managing required in the management profession While I agree with the rest of your statements, I disagree with this. Management is overwhelmingly extraverts because extraversion lends itself very strongly to the kind of elbow-rubbing that our culture sees as more important than performance for determining suitability for raises, promotions, and such. I know some introverted people who are abso…
For the record, I'm an introverted manager (and seemingly a decent one judging by my record and the feedback I receive). I do find the people managing aspects to be pretty exhausting (though also fulfilling and totally worthwhile).
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So what will you do when you inevitably retire? We’ve spent our lives making work the center (US probably more so than EU). What you are describing can read as “I can’t bare WFH” or it can be “the pandemic severed me from my social circle, that happened to be at work”. For me, at some point I realized that work friends replaced most of my social circle, but when I changed companies, I lost touch with most of them. Th…
While I haven't thought as far as retirement, I don't think I agree with the basic sentiment here. It's not that I need my "work friends". It's that I need my "work friends" while working . If I and all my "normal friends" were financially independent and didn't work (somehow I find it easier to picture, albeit far more unlikely, than retirement – go figure), I wouldn't feel robbed of social interactions at all. Well…
Sincerely hope that you are able to untrap yourself in all circumstances and get back to the happier state!