How is it possible?for all positions?
Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
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Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#282I 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…
I disagree that this is a likely outcome. For many people, this is a worst of both worlds - still requires all the costs of living within commuting distance of your employer (particularly for SFBA and NYC) and likely shrinks the average size/perks of the office you commute to. Partial remote doesn't seem to solve any problem in a way that is any better than the status quo.
This is already a pretty common situation for many companies (in NYC). A 1 hour+ commute to be more tolerable if you only have to do it twice a week. Fully remote companies, you might see your coworkers in person once a year. That's a big leap for a lot of places to accept.
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#283In person teams are easy, and fully remote teams are easy too. A blend is extremely hard to get right. If you are in a meeting and some people are in the room while others are beamed in via a projector, the remote folks will always feel like second hand citizens. Depending on what kind of person you are, you might have enough skill to still participate in the discussion, but it will always be harder than just being in the room.
The best way to do partially remote is to have even the in-office people dial into the meetings individually as well. This also means trading in your whiteboard for remote collaboration tools like Lucidchart to allow remote folks to contribute as well.
If you actually do this, then I find that over time, the in-office people will begin to question why they are in the office and slowly drift off to be remote, leading to a 100% distributed team.
If you don't do this, then the remote people slowly get isolated and cease to become valuable contributors, eventually either leaving to fully distributed teams, or coming back into the office. Either way though, the partially distributed team eventually gravitates one way or the other.
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#284I work at a large tech company on a young team (average age is late twenties). In my experience many don't view working from home regularly as a benefit. I understand that must change drastically when you're middle aged, have a family to live around and a spacious house in the suburbs. But most younger people want to live in the middle of the city (i.e. small, often shared apartments but a short commute) and have no…
Where is your evidence to back up the idea that most younger people want to live in the middle of the city? That is anecdotal as far as I can tell.
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#285I work at a large tech company on a young team (average age is late twenties). In my experience many don't view working from home regularly as a benefit. I understand that must change drastically when you're middle aged, have a family to live around and a spacious house in the suburbs. But most younger people want to live in the middle of the city (i.e. small, often shared apartments but a short commute) and have no…
Why would work from home in the suburbs be better than work from home in the city?
I'm pretty much the demographic described above: on the younger side, and optimized for central location in housing.
I have a fairly small 1BR. I don't really have a proper work environment set up--what's the point of cramming a desk in if I'm going into the office every day? I have no yard, so at the moment fresh air is limited. I work, cook, eat, and sleep within the same three rooms.
That's not even touching on people who paid out the ass to get studios in trendier neighborhoods. Personally, I'd lose my mind.
Contrast this with my parents in the suburbs. It's normally a longer commute, but there's a dedicated office, a back yard, and just generally more breathing room.
I think a lot of this is less WFH-related, and more, y'know, apocalypse-related. I could work from a coffee shop or coworking space. Go to the park. Go out for dinner/drinks in the evening. Hell, I could've gotten a bigger, cheaper place if commute time wasn't an issue.
But for the time being, the sprawl of suburban living seems to have its perks.
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
I couldn't agree more. If I could work from home permanently I would move far far away from where I am currently living. I would get myself a nice condo or small house, and settle in. Currently, where I live, despite the fact that I make almost 30k/year more than the medium average income I still can only just afford a one bedroom apartment spending the suggested 30% of my income. Imagine being able to buy a house!!!…
What's the guarantee that say your San Francisco/NYC employer will keep paying you city rates when you are living in a small town in mid-west. At some point they will catch up and start saving money this way. Everyone at a tech company is not a crucial employee. Don't get me wrong, I am all in for getting paid SF rates while living in a cheap Texas suburb.
If that really happens, the next order effect will be cheaper rents in the bay area.
Even now, there are some good rent deals. I moved to a new apartment a couple weeks ago (mainly because I needed a better WFH space to work effectively) and got 6 weeks free on my lease, which isn't normally seen in the bay area.
When the pandemic passes though I do hope to be able to return to working from an office, if just because it's less lonely and there is usually better sunlight in business spaces than what I get at home. Maybe 2-3 days a week in the office and 2-3 days from home would be a nice balance, when it is safe to do so. Employers may also see the value in at least providing some additional financial incentive for living closer to the office and being willing to come to the office (if safe), although enabling full remote work for those who choose it is something I also fully agree with.
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#287The thing I miss the most while WFH is the whiteboard conversations. It's nice to be able to drag your colleagues for quick tech discussion and go back to work. Pen is much faster than drawing diagrams online.
Paint?
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This has about as much truth to it as people who say "perks are just to make you stay at the office longer!". i.e. it's typically not a problem and can be very beneficial to the worker.
Re: perks, based on my own experience working remotely, in traditional offices, and those with very nice perks I have to respectfully disagree.
Invitations to "casual chats" over breakfast or dinner in the office cafeteria are IME quite common in the latter, especially if you're seeking access to senior leadership or flagged as someone whose opinion/buy-off is important to a project.
Even without an explicit invitation, if you're at the office already there's no real barrier to someone pulling you in to a project-related discussion. At that point you're effectively on the clock whether you intended/wanted to be or not.
It really comes down to the fact that commitments, decisions, and requests for assistance made across a cafeteria table are not considered any less binding, which means you can't just "relax and enjoy the free food" when it's provided at work by your employer.
(Conversely, if you're someone who tries to protect your personal time and set clear boundaries between work and non-work hours, you miss out on a lot of these ad-hoc meetings, which can result in a persistent lack of access and influence compared to your colleagues who spend 12+ hours a day on-site.)
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#289I 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…
I disagree that this is a likely outcome. For many people, this is a worst of both worlds - still requires all the costs of living within commuting distance of your employer (particularly for SFBA and NYC) and likely shrinks the average size/perks of the office you commute to. Partial remote doesn't seem to solve any problem in a way that is any better than the status quo.
Yet, many workers prefer it. For example, my team is 18 persons fully in-office and 4 fully remote (I'm one of the latter). We've been all fully remote for two months now, and today the manager asked: what do you think about making this permanent? And all the 18 colleagues agreed that their preferred solution would be partial remote.
People like their socialization at work. Many also like living in the city anyway (granted, most of my colleagues are young and childless). And outside of extreme cases like SF, a tech salary is enough to rent a decent apartment.
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#290I work at a large tech company on a young team (average age is late twenties). In my experience many don't view working from home regularly as a benefit. I understand that must change drastically when you're middle aged, have a family to live around and a spacious house in the suburbs. But most younger people want to live in the middle of the city (i.e. small, often shared apartments but a short commute) and have no…
If I could keep my current compensation and move to the low cost of living area where my family is located, I would reach financial independence 10-15 years ahead of my current trajectory with Bay Area rents/costs. I'll settle for the minor inconveniences of WFH any day in order to get a decade of my life to spend with family or to work on my own projects.
I can imagine more companies adopting a cost of living adjustment. There’s also a non trivial tax burden complexity with an employee base spread around the country/world.