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Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#11

Post by blhack »

bfrog wrote: post #4

And so begins the bay area salary bubble pop

Don't forget about the commercial real estate bubble pop, and potentially a massive pump in prices of family homes as a result.

I think that investors are going to be moving their money out of commercial real estate, and into residential.

Edit: to be clear: I don't live in the Bay Area, and I think the housing prices there could go either way:

1) People spend more time in their homes and spend an even larger portion of their income on their home. Having a "good" home becomes even more important since you spend even more time there, and prices go up even more.

2) People just leave the bay area. Residential prices go down in the bay area.

But there is a whole world out there that doesn't include SF, and I think that just generally speaking you're going to see an increase in residential home values as investors look for safe places to place their money outside of commercial real estate.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#12

Post by poulsbohemian »

amateurdev wrote: post #2

I have a feeling a lot of companies will follow suit. It saves up huge costs in real-estate by not having to provide seats to people. It also might just open up more companies to hire from any time zone.

The interesting question is, why now? I mean on the surface sure - because we have a pandemic and state ordered quarantine. But the more interesting question is - why is this finally provoking companies and why do we think they will continue the trend in the future post-quarantine? I've been a remote worker since 2006. It's been obvious to me for a long time that companies could go all remote or some version of remote, and it would have all the positive effects we all know about:

-- Reduction of commute, which is good for the environment and good for people's stress levels.

-- Reduction/elimination of the cost of office space

-- Ability to recruit across a wider geographic area

-- Greater employee satisfaction as people can live where they choose

And so on and so on. And yet in the face of this information, plus studies that show higher rates of productivity when employees / workers control their work environment (and schedule), companies have been resistant. I can speculate on the reasons for this (read: control, stuck in industrial era management practices, etc), but the question remains: why do we think companies will suddenly become enlightened and embrace this long-term?

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#13

Post by moneil971 »

I’m not sure why it took a pandemic to make this a real option for major tech companies. At my previous company, the bulk of my team was in NY and I would commute an hour plus each way to sit on endless video chats and conference calls with people in other time zones. But working from home was frowned upon...unless you were a contractor, in which case you had to work from home bc there weren’t enough desks.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#14

Post by ravenstine »

danso wrote: post #5
znpy wrote: post #3

cool news, but "forever" is a big word, nonetheless

I wonder if it’ll come to have the same meaning as “unlimited vacation”, a vague policy that in practice, is used unofficially in job evaluations to implicitly punish employees who take advantage of the policy.

That could be, although the difference between vacation time and remote work is that any loss in productivity/value with remote work is either nil or hard to calculate. Vacation time is different in that it's clearly time that the employer has to pay for work to not be done. So the optimist in me thinks that tech employers will have difficulty credibly taking employees that have performed well as remote workers and coercing them to come into the office, which doesn't really provide a clear benefit.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#15

Post by reaperducer »

taurath wrote: post #6
amateurdev wrote: post #2

I have a feeling a lot of companies will follow suit. It saves up huge costs in real-estate by not having to provide seats to people. It also might just open up more companies to hire from any time zone.

Time zone is gonna be tougher. Going from sync to async requires a big shift and most big companies have enough trouble with communication. One other benefit to companies - maybe they won’t pay a premium anymore for people who live in expensive areas.

If the time zone difference is San Francisco to London, sure. But I've lived in Pacific while working for a company in Central, and live in Eastern while working for a company in Pacific, and it's not a big deal. You just adjust your daily cycle by a couple of hours.

Domestically, it only gets complicated when you have an entire office of people in a different zone. Then large meetings get hard to schedule around lunch and COB.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#17

Post by kelw22 »

dudul wrote: post #7
amateurdev wrote: post #2

I have a feeling a lot of companies will follow suit. It saves up huge costs in real-estate by not having to provide seats to people. It also might just open up more companies to hire from any time zone.

These advantages have always existed, and yet most of the FANG have resisted WFH policies until now. Personally, I find it pretty funny how this "work that can only be done well in person, in an office" can suddenly be done remotely no problem when the government mandates that everybody stays home.

Personally, I find it pretty funny how this "work that can only be done well in person, in an office" can suddenly be done remotely no problem when the government mandates that everybody stays home.

You're spinning things toward your bias with your sentence. Who, exactly, is saying it can be done "no problem"? My experience is that any communication-intensive work is significantly harder and more time consuming. We just don't have a choice now, so we're doing it.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#18

Post by robbyking »

I work for a pretty well-known tech company, and my hypothesis is that we'll switch to a mostly at-home work week, where most people WFH 3 or 4 days a week with one day of the week being designated as a "meeting day" where everyone is in the office.

I don't think this will happen because of people are worried about virus transmission, but instead because most people like working from home and we've proven we can be just as productive when we're out of the office.

That said, I'm one of the few people who like going into an office. There are fewer distractions and better food options. :)

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#19

Post by dumbfoundded »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #9

It would be good if more tech companies embraced this. I bet if they need tools for themselves we’ll see a lot of progress in remote collaboration tools. To make this work I wonder how executives will adapt. In my company the higher you go up the chain, the more they want face to face communication. I guess most top executives are people persons so not seeing things like body language or using body language takes awa…

Collaboration tools are already pretty solid. What else do you really need other than a remote desktop + video conferencing?

I think the biggest use case will be helping recreate the virtual water cooler.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#20

Post by dudul »

moneil971 wrote: post #13

I’m not sure why it took a pandemic to make this a real option for major tech companies. At my previous company, the bulk of my team was in NY and I would commute an hour plus each way to sit on endless video chats and conference calls with people in other time zones. But working from home was frowned upon...unless you were a contractor, in which case you had to work from home bc there weren’t enough desks.

Your anecdote reminds me of the time a company I was interviewing at flew me half way across the country for their "onsite interview", and 75% of the sessions were me, seating in one of their offices, zooming/skyping with the interviewer.
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