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Quora goes permanently remote-first

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Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#211

Post by ghaff »

hawaiianbrah wrote: post #96
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…

Meetings where some/most of the people are in a room and some are dialing in suck for those dialing in. We started requiring everyone to dial in, even if one person was, and it levels the communication playing field immensely.

"Suck" is maybe too strong a term--though it can be the case if most of the team is co-located and there's one person who always has to dial in. A number of teams I work with also have an "everyone dials in" rule even though they're pretty distributed anyway.

As someone who is mostly remote, I never had too much of a problem with hybrid meetings. People in a conference room are pretty respectful that there are people on the phone in my experience. That said, the current situation where everyone is dialing in individually is something of a meeting upgrade overall. People have also gotten better at collaboratively edited agendas etc. not that they were bad to start with.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#212

Post by balfirevic »

toyg wrote: post #194
m3kw9 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The current general model for US companies is to not hire people in Europe at all. That fails even harder.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#213

Post by PragmaticPulp »

toyg wrote: post #200
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trust me, there is demand for programming jobs that work night-owl hours. A surprising number of programmers loathe morning work schedules. If Quora wants to create a job for them, there’s nothing wrong with that.

You don’t have to work there. You don’t have to work those hours. But please don’t shame a company for creating an opportunity for the people who voluntarily prefer those hours.

The alternative isn’t that Quora is forced to let European employees work their own schedules while everyone else has to follow the rules. The alternative is that Quora simply decides not to hire in Europe.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#214

Post by ghaff »

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…

People complain about this. People would complain if they said they only hire in North American timezones. That said, a big window of synchronous communications between US West Coast and Europe is tough. East Coast to Europe is much more doable on a day-to-day basis.

I was actually having a conversation with someone I know in the UK about this a while back. His feeling was that it was a something of an advantage for a company that wants both a large US and a European presence to be East Coast-based for this reason.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#215

Post by jfengel »

Leszek wrote: post #154

One interesting aspect of this is that they still explicitly expect "synchronous" work, timezones be damned: > We have initially designated 9am to 3pm Pacific Time as “coordination hours” where most employees will be expected to be available for meetings and impromptu communication, regardless of where they are located. This maps to 6am to 12pm in Hawaii, 12pm to 6pm Eastern Time, 5pm to 11pm in the UK, and 6pm to 12…

It seems an excessively long window. Six hours isn't a "coordination window"; it's a workday.

It's reasonable to have a set time when you can ensure that everybody will be together, so that you have at least some overlap for synchronous communication every day. But one or two hours seems appropriate, rather than six.

Even within the US, there are workers who want to work shift like 10-6, or even 12-8, without seeming entirely out of touch with the staff. It's good to mix such people into your team: it means you get some kind of coverage later in the day for people working late, emergencies, etc.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#216

Post by lowmemcpu »

arcticbull wrote: post #179

What an awful idea; people go to work for the social connection. This feels like another episode of ‘Silicon Valley reinvents management,’ and will likely end in the same way.

> What an awful idea; people go to work for the social connection.

Heh, I disagree. I work remote and I go to work to do work and get a paycheck. The office has only helped to whiteboard or do some interviews, but other than that I avoid it

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#217

Post by ubermonkey »

Leszek wrote: post #154

One interesting aspect of this is that they still explicitly expect "synchronous" work, timezones be damned: > We have initially designated 9am to 3pm Pacific Time as “coordination hours” where most employees will be expected to be available for meetings and impromptu communication, regardless of where they are located. This maps to 6am to 12pm in Hawaii, 12pm to 6pm Eastern Time, 5pm to 11pm in the UK, and 6pm to 12…

My assumption is that Quora is very CONUS-focussed, no?

So a 9-3 PT window is pretty reasonable for that region, especially if they're transitioning from offices where you were expected to be at a desk.

It's absolutely true that the work window is unpalatable much east of Nova Scotia, but they also don't have any people IN those zones now.

OTOH, being able to move to Ireland (e.g.) and keep your job -- albeit with super weird hours -- is pretty neat.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#218

Post by commandlinefan »

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

> them oldies

Actually the real “oldies” are paying for their kid’s college tuition now.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#219

Post by henrik_w »

waheoo wrote: post #90
rootusrootus wrote: post #88

I expect there to be a momentary burst in attempts to go remote-first, or at least hybrid. Senior executives will want to level the playing field between expensive areas and cheaper ones, and use that to drive down salaries overall. But then, there are plenty of managers who really see a lot of value in spontaneous face-to-face interactions, or even planned ones, because so much communication happens just in body lan…

Im still waiting for the rebound back to a cubicle. Fuck open plan. I really wish people would get it through their damned thick skulls that their heads are not the same as my head. And my head is not the same as her head. And her head is not the same as their head. We all need our own accomidations. Some people like open plan, some people hate it. Some people thrive in an office environment, some people thrive at ho…

I like working in a team room - several developers working on the same product. Great for collaboration. Almost without fail, proponents of remote work like to compare remote to open plan offices only. There are other ways of working too.

During the pandemic I have been working from home for three months. Mostly it has worked pretty well. However, I do think you miss some aspects of collaboration when you do. I hardly ever see anybody touch on this. Probably because many people see getting rid of the commute as such a big plus. I sympathise with that view.

But I tried to touch on what I think we lose here: https://henrikwarne.com/2020/06/09/working-from-home-cons-an...

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#220

Post by toyg »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #213
toyg wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Trust me, there is demand for programming jobs that work night-owl hours. A surprising number of programmers loathe morning work schedules. If Quora wants to create a job for them, there’s nothing wrong with that. You don’t have to work there. You don’t have to work those hours. But please don’t shame a company for creating an opportunity for the people who voluntarily prefer those hours. The alternative isn’t that Q…

> The alternative is that Quora simply decides not to hire in Europe

Well then, so much for competition for best talent and all that jazz. I'm sure Quora's competitors will be happy to pick up the slack.

> Trust me, there is demand for programming jobs that work night-owl hours.

That is not the point. There is demand for night-time-guard jobs too. That doesn't mean it's a particularly appealing job, or that night-time guards are the best guards, or that regular guards won't be pissed off when you tell them from now on it's night-time shifts only, or that society as a whole is happy to have all these night-time guards around.

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