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Quora goes permanently remote-first

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Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#191

Post by michaelt »

donohoe wrote: post #180
barbecue_sauce wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many oldies don't have families.

Can’t tell if you’re mildly trolling or serious. The obvious point is that enough people in EU have children/families to make these hours a huge burden if not outright unworkable.

Presumably they think "workers in EU timezones will have to work unsociable hours" is a more generous policy than "we don't hire workers in EU timezones"

Of course, policies like "no cross-continent teams" or "no meetings whatsoever" would be even better - but that's an even bigger corporate re-organisation.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#194

Post by toyg »

m3kw9 wrote: post #186
toyg wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t work for families. 6pm - 9pm is primetime for kids. But who cares about them oldies, right? /s

Why choose to work there from Europe if you have such constraints?

Indeed, I guess Quora will become (even more of) a singles-fest in Europe.

My point is that as a general model, it fails hard here.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#195

Post by toyg »

michaelt wrote: post #191
donohoe wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t tell if you’re mildly trolling or serious. The obvious point is that enough people in EU have children/families to make these hours a huge burden if not outright unworkable.

Presumably they think "workers in EU timezones will have to work unsociable hours" is a more generous policy than "we don't hire workers in EU timezones" Of course, policies like "no cross-continent teams" or "no meetings whatsoever" would be even better - but that's an even bigger corporate re-organisation.

Definitely generous towards the taxman! All that extra taxable on unsociable hours...

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#196

Post by ghaff »

hoka wrote: post #73
aeternum wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company has made the hybrid model work. We've had a mix of fully remote along with two physical offices. It's really not all that complex, conference rooms have to have a video conference system that is added by default to all meetings. Ad-hoc meetings can start video with a single button press and a short code/url sent over slack. We strongly encourage employees to keep discussions in 'public' slack rooms rather…

And what is the breakdown of executives, managers, etc between on-prem and remote?

Ar my company, which is (normally) a mixture of on-prem (at many different offices) and remote/WFH, I'm sure all of the senior leadership team have offices somewhere. But many/most of their reports and other people they coordinate with are in different offices/remote and most of them are traveling most of the time anyway.

In think the opinions of a lot of people here are shaped by small companies where everyone is on a floor or two of a building. At global companies, the reality is that people are pretty distributed and you have late night and early morning phone calls.

West Coast to Europe is tough for day-to-day synchronous communications. We don't have many people on the West Coast and are pretty much East Coast-centric (and Europe to a lesser degree). And that coordination works fairly well.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#197

Post by PragmaticPulp »

toyg wrote: post #170
rakoo wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European here, and the 6PM-12AM window is the one I feel the most productive in. I guess it will be a big change for a majority of people but I would definitely be interested by this. Moreover when I work, I work, so if the sun is already down I'm ok with it; when it's up I can do all the active parts of my day that are more enjoyable during the day. Still, it's not perfect. I don't think it would be that big of a de…

Doesn’t work for families. 6pm - 9pm is primetime for kids. But who cares about them oldies, right? /s

When I managed teams with flex hours, several parents explicitly preferred to work 4PM to midnight because they could spend the morning with their kids while their spouse worked their day job.

If the working hours are presented up front and agreed upon by all, I don’t see why this is any more problematic than any other shift work. There are a lot of programmers out there who are naturally night owls and would prefer those hours anyway.

Having direct experience with this, I can say that it’s not only not a problem, it’s a bonus for many. Including people with children.

Let the people decide what’s best for themselves and choose jobs accordingly. Don’t shame companies who don’t fit your own personal ideals of working hours.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#199

Post by ghaff »

timsally wrote: post #39
threeseed wrote: post #13

There's an insightful series of comments from Sid, CEO of Gitlab about why this is not likely to work over the long term: https://twitter.com/sytses/status/1264341436138270720 It might be different for Quora given that their CEO and SLT will be remote. But I still believe that whenever you have an office you are creating a community of employees who will have a different relationship to those who are working remotely…

> But I still believe that whenever you have an office you are creating a community of employees who will have a different relationship to those who are working remotely. Fully concur. Senior leadership needs to lead by example, whether it be remote work, taking paternity leave, or using a healthy amount of vacation. As some have pointed out, remote work as some companies has the potential to become the new "Unlimite…

>Senior leadership needs to lead by example

I was having dinner with a friend of mine who is a senior manager at a well-known SV company that has "unlimited vacation." He was telling me that the CEO absolutely sets an example of taking unplugged vacations. In fact, he told me that they had a PR person a while back who just couldn't deal with the CEO being out of pocket for an extended time to the point where they just quit.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#200

Post by toyg »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #197
toyg wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t work for families. 6pm - 9pm is primetime for kids. But who cares about them oldies, right? /s

When I managed teams with flex hours, several parents explicitly preferred to work 4PM to midnight because they could spend the morning with their kids while their spouse worked their day job. If the working hours are presented up front and agreed upon by all, I don’t see why this is any more problematic than any other shift work. There are a lot of programmers out there who are naturally night owls and would prefer…

> Don’t shame companies who don’t fit your own personal ideals of working hours.

It's not "my" ideal - I don't set school hours. In fact, unsociable hours are defined in law, for many, many reasons.

Quora's approach is shortsighted and, in my opinion, fundamentally ageist towards their European workers - and I say that as someone who definitely prefers to work afternoons.

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