Quora goes permanently remote-first • Hacker News Board

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#231

Post by blaser-waffle » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #144

colechristensen wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about actual offices? You know, rooms with walls and doors. My yearly salary could build a comfortable home for a family of 4 every single year in some of the cheaper places in this country, I'm pretty sure my company laptop at several of my employers has retailed > $4000, yet 4 feet of desk space and a chair that seemed to have lived a hard life on the streets has been my most common accommodation. Surely an off…

Because you attract talent by high salaries, so try to save elsewhere (especially when office rental prices are astronomical). You yourself are yet another proof of this - you changed whatever rural environment you had to go into cramped office with very high salary. Clearly, the money was more important to you than vast open plains and remoteness. Most folks work this way. You ask for private space near colleagues -…

Aye, this. I need to fit 250 people in a single floor in a big city. One floor is already expensive as hell, and I'm not going to pick up 2-3 more. Hell, even my managers don't get offices.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#232

Post by oiasdjfoiasd » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #203

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…

> 5pm to 11pm in the UK, and 6pm to 12am across most of Europe This is completely ridiculous and means abandoning any kind of family or social life. It also means they probably only hire young, single people with no kids. Based on this, they sound like a seriously insensitive and diversity-hostile company.

lmao.

diversity-hostile

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#233

Post by dsq » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

baron816 wrote: post #37

I really hope we see some specialized remote worker residential communities in the future. Actually, I’m sure there’ll be money in building them. Imagine a small town with no cars or roads. The community has lots of events to socialize you with your neighbors. Lots of traditions and festivals. Some communities may look like Brooklyn—row houses, except just grass and trees lining the blocks. Maybe another community wo…

Sounds like a kibbutz

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#234

Post by oiasdjfoiasd » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

baron816 wrote: post #37

I really hope we see some specialized remote worker residential communities in the future. Actually, I’m sure there’ll be money in building them. Imagine a small town with no cars or roads. The community has lots of events to socialize you with your neighbors. Lots of traditions and festivals. Some communities may look like Brooklyn—row houses, except just grass and trees lining the blocks. Maybe another community wo…

lol, a community of people who never go anywhere outside there house... sounds great.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#235

Post by blaser-waffle » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #178

chippy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the wework model. Instead of the companies running the offices, the companies pay the workers to use 3rd party offices.

It’s the AWS model applied to real estate: move that $$$ from CapEx to OpEx, woot!

Office leases were always OpEx mang

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#236

Post by bambax » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #228

bambax wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5pm to 11pm in the UK, and 6pm to 12am across most of Europe This is completely ridiculous and means abandoning any kind of family or social life. It also means they probably only hire young, single people with no kids. Based on this, they sound like a seriously insensitive and diversity-hostile company.

The parents I know who could do flex-time liked to spend the morning/afternoon with their kids and then work in the evenings. For younger kids that allows you to split-shift with your partner while for older kids you get to be there when they get ready/get home from school.

In France kids from 6 years old onward, get home from school between 5 and 6 pm and usually have extracurricular activities after that. Then they are supposed to go to bed at around 10 pm.

So if you're working 5-11 pm you're only going to see your kids at breakfast at best (if they don't skip it because they're late). You're also not going to have dinner together as a family, which, to me, would be unacceptable.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#237

Post by sytse » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

dangelo wrote: post #82

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…

Sid explicitly says he expects we (Quora) avoided the pitfalls of hybrid companies in this comment: https://www.quora.com/q/quora/Remote-First-at-Quora/comment/...

Thanks for linking. I missed the 6 hour 'coordination time' when I made that comment. I think that async as the default is very important to be remote first https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/asynchro...

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#238

Post by kube-system » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #222

balfirevic wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Meh, plenty of companies open European subsidiaries every day. Google, Twitter and Facebook are massive in Ireland.

Becoming a multinational company with foreign subsidiaries is a whole different ballpark than hiring a one-off foreign employee, though.

And those employees aren’t technically employed by US companies. They’re employed by Irish companies that are owned by US companies.

The vast majority of US tech companies are not multinationals and aren’t going to consider incorporating overseas to hire anyone.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#239

Post by rootusrootus » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #138

waheoo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How about actual offices? You know, rooms with walls and doors. My yearly salary could build a comfortable home for a family of 4 every single year in some of the cheaper places in this country, I'm pretty sure my company laptop at several of my employers has retailed > $4000, yet 4 feet of desk space and a chair that seemed to have lived a hard life on the streets has been my most common accommodation. Surely an off…

People near the senior levels of management spend a lot of time worrying about dollars, to the exclusion of everything else. And since they tend to do a pretty piss-poor job of quantifying employee morale as it relates to productivity, that gets ignored. My company saved a half million dollars a year by making the lease smaller. Great, right? Except that in our building we have hundreds of developers. Let's say ~100M in fully loaded costs. So if moving them all from cubicles into six-foot bench seating (no, not kidding) knocked down their productivity by 10%, then the open office was a net loss. But they can't quantify that, so it's not even considered. Well, until we lost about 10% of our developers in a single year, but I'm not sure if even then senior management got a clue.

My last company tried to end their practice of providing plastic spoons in the break area. Probably spent more money in wages to write the email than it costs to buy a box of spoons that'll last the better part of a year. That one actually got people riled up enough to complain, because it was both inconvenient and incredibly petty. We were just going to buy a box of spoons from Webstaurant Store and expense it. LOL. Silly managers trying to impress their own managers by saving every penny.

Re: Quora goes permanently remote-first

#240

Post by rootusrootus » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

henrik_w wrote: post #219

waheoo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hardl…

I totally support team rooms. I have had great success with those. I'd happily take a cube over an open office, but I'd take a conference room for each team (with real desks, though, not a big table ;-)) over any other option.

The place I'm at now has six-foot bench seating for everyone below VP. The dividers between rows aren't even tall enough to block your vision when you're sitting. It's a terrible arrangement, very noisy.