Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#141

Post by tantalor » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

Permanent and forever are different things! Twitter could change this policy when conditions return back to normal.

permanent: lasting or intended to last or remain unchanged indefinitely.

indefinitely: for an unlimited or unspecified period of time.

forever: for all future time; for always.

Permanent just means we don't know when some condition will change; contrast with temporary where we do know when it will change.

Forever means it won't ever change under any circumstances.

For example: a magnetized iron nail is a temporary magnet and will lose its magnetism over a predictable amount of time; a permanent magnet can be demagnetized, but otherwise should continue to be magnetic indefinitely; a forever magnet is not a real thing.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#142

Post by xwdv » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

Thank God. Hopefully more companies will follow this example and my company as well, and then I can finally move away from this wretched place and buy a nice mansion size home somewhere quiet and with great internet connectivity. Tired of paying too much for a shoebox apartment living like some kind of pauper. And not to mention the piles of shit everyday in the street. Maybe then I would finally be able to settle down and have a child as well.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#143

Post by VectorLock » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

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…

>I just don't think we have the communication tools to support productive collaboration between people who hardly ever meet.

How do Open Source projects achieve it?

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#144

Post by hanaq » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

Does anyone know how their product team will handle this?

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#145

Post by raminf » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

One of the interesting side-effects of everyone working from home has been that group videoconference meetings have been more equitable, instead of those in a physical meeting room vs. those calling in.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#146

Post by sylens » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

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…

I would love for more companies to embrace this just to open up the candidate pool for positions.

There are so many positions at Microsoft, for example, that I would have loved to apply for, but they require you to be in Redmond, and I'm just not in a position to relocate.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#147

Post by eecks » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

2bitencryption wrote: post #114

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 o…

It's not as effective because we are in a pandemic. People are working at home but also worrying about the future, looking after at-risk people, looking after children during the working day, not properly set up for WFH, dealing with neighbours being at home too during the working day, dealing with not working out, not playing sports, not watching sports, not doing hobbies and not socialising with friends.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#148

Post by brutus1213 » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

2bitencryption wrote: post #114

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 o…

I don't understand why you don't just use slack or email?

Other users have mentioned white-boards and brainstorming sessions .. those are harder to replicate but still.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#149

Post by spike021 » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

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…

>we've proven we can be just as productive when we're out of the office.

I think it's very important to realize that if we are or are not productive WFH, there will be others who feel the opposite.

Working from home doesn't work for everyone, or it doesn't work in every case. Maybe it can be further optimized to work better for most cases, but currently it's not.

* Speaking as someone who recently started a new job two weeks before the government SIP for the Bay Area and has had to mostly virtual on-board and ramp-up. It has not been an easy experience. Maybe it's the on-boarding/ramp-up for my team that's not optimized, or maybe it's not easy simply because I'm not already a full-time remote worker already. Some people who enjoy WFH and get remote jobs probably don't have the issues I've had, and that's okay too. But I think it's unrealistic to expect everyone joining a new company during this situation to be properly productive through it and potentially WFH indefinitely. For my company in particular they've already mentioned we'll get to WFH for this through the end of the year.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#150

Post by _nhynes » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

mjayhn wrote: post #59

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it would also be good if more (tech) companies offered a decent working environment. That's coming from personal experience btw, where most jobs / assignments I've had, it was usually open plan, flexible seat arrangements. I have a new job now where I have a fixed desk with a set of drawers. It's a breath of fresh air and honestly it sounds so stupid and trivial. But employers don't have their employees' b…

I won't go near an open office after COVID19 and I doubt I'm alone, I think things will change greatly.

I'm not sure that I understand this sentiment. Is the worry about COVID specifically (and hence would be abated by a vaccine or herd immunity), or is it about increased awareness of all infectious diseases? My lack of understanding stems from a (perhaps naive) assumption that social distancing will eventually go away along with the threat. I'd be glad to hear others' opinions on the matter.