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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

#111

Post by hocuspocus »

wolco wrote: post #81
robbyking wrote: post #18

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 j…

Why keep the expensive office in your case?

Typically the company will then reassess the office capacity needed to provide enough flexible space and accommodate all teams and their needs. But there's plenty of time to do that, since you cannot break (or not renew) a corporate lease overnight.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#112

Post by fragmede »

ska wrote: post #63
the_watcher wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you move up the chain in global companies such as Twitter, it becomes more likely that you'll have a superior or direct report based in a different location than you, and this has been true for years. The "people person" executive theory only holds for companies that do not already have a substantial number of teams that are not all located in the same place.

I'm not sure how your conclusion follows - it's undoubtedly true that more and more folks are involved in teams that at least partly remote. However, the skills needed to manage these effectively are mostly the same as co-located teams. To whatever degree "people person" was needed, it seems mostly the same to me.

If a coworker or employee comes in to work distraught for some reason, it's far easier to reach out in person and find out that their dog got ran over/relationship broke up/parent is in the hospital. It's not impossible remote, but it's harder, on all levels. A manager that has strong in-person skills but is weaker on digital communication skills may result in poorer outcomes all around.

(I'm pro WFH but pretending it's the same just seems foolish to me.)

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#113

Post by abvdasker »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #12
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 remot…

There was some kind of artificial barrier to remote-only that COVID forced the industry to break through. Maybe there was some stigma associated with it. Maybe there was natural resistance to a workplace model which was somewhat untested at scale. I think the current mentality held by most executives who make these kinds of decisions is that face-to-face meetings are better than video-chat.

But now that the industry is on the other side of that barrier, it seems to have no reason to go back.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#114

Post by 2bitencryption »

It's odd how HN does not reflect the reality I see.

I'm at a big (Google/Microsoft/Amazon) workplace and WFH has always been a last-resort thing. I can't even imagine my team moving toward this. Every day I do too many things in the office that are face-to-face. Drop by the architect to get an opinion about XYZ, drop by a PM to ask about their functional spec, drop by a coworker to ask about some comments they left on my PR. Get three people in a room to go over an ongoing incident that's impacting a major customer's operations.

All these things could be pings/video calls, but having done that for a few months now, it's just not as effective as being there.

I wonder if the "WFH" discussion on HN is simply silicon-valley wishful thinking, if it's only possible for highly independent contractors and startup-hopping tech bros, and if it will never actually work in a large workplace environment.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#115

Post by Hard_Space »

caseyw wrote: post #26

I’ve worked from home for a number of years. It’s all about having a normal schedule. My family knows when I’m in the office, I am at work. There isn’t anyone popping over my shoulder, and general interruptions are almost nil in my case. I think a lot of people are going to be super surprised what a quiet room and your playlist of choice can do to increase productivity. Just my 2 cents.

I've been working from home for about 16 months, and I'm afraid my partner doesn't quite get what a different head space I am in when I'm working, when she comes for a friendly visit if she isn't busy herself. I can seem cold and even abrupt, sometimes, when she comes to see me. But it takes so long to get in that space, it is hard to be brought out of it.

Ironic thing is, she also works from home about 80-90% of the time. Guess she inhabits that mind-set more easily than I do!

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#117

Post by city41 »

hinkley wrote: post #87

I want to know how to run a 24/7 company with senior employees spread around the world a few timezones apart. I just don't think we have the communication tools to support productive collaboration between people who hardly ever meet. (I think what I may be saying is that while yes, there are Open Source projects that overcome these same sorts of problems, I don't think it's tools or process that are the reason they w…

There are successful, fully remote, companies, such as Automattic (Wordpress), Gitlab and more. If they can figure it out, seems more companies can as well.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#118

Post by pmiller2 »

fermienrico wrote: post #85

Then why pay $200k for a software engineer in the valley when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary? The question I have is what portion of the $200k salary is 1) due to the raw talent of the individual 2) because they live in the bay area.

Bingo! I often talk about how you can rent a 3BR apartment in my home town (Nowhere, Michigan) for like $900. This is true -- I've verified it recently. The drawback is that you have to live in my home town.

I can certainly see companies wanting to pay less based on CoL simply to make the bottom line better. Given the way capitalism works, I'd say this is a near inevitability. The end result will probably be that the big tech companies are going to start "offshoring" work to the Midwest, and other low to very low cost of living areas. ("We'll pay you $70k per year, but you can live wherever you want in the US!")

I can't see this being good for employees, because there are significant benefits to living in a place like NYC or the Bay Area, and those benefits would be lost if people had to live in the middle of nowhere to make it worthwhile.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#120

Post by ericlewis »

dudul wrote: post #20
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.

That sounds like my interview experience too! It was crazy!
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