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Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

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Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#131
post #100

Anyone else suspect we are going to see a massive deflation of cities?

I work live in Bangalore (India) where most IT companies are. I could go back to my village and save money and work remote. it's just good and easy on paper but very hard. A city like Bangalore offers a heck lot of things starting from the Tech community / vibe, weekend meetups (after Corona hopefully), Uber, Next day Amazon delivery, Online food deliveries, Work/Job Market, Side gigs opportunities.

I might be interested to moving to a nicer city probably stay slightly away from the expensive side but moving completely away from City is difficult for a lot of families who have enjoyed that life and its perks.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cost of living in cities has been rising at an insane rate over the last decade, a large part of it is tech salaries. I know a ton of software engineers who only live in cities b/c that's where the jobs are. Places outside of cities also offer a lot of (different) enjoyable things to do. Presumably big companies moving jobs away from cities will have some impact.

San Francisco had just as many houses before tech moved in, the only thing tech did was make housing more expensive

Both "cities will thin out because of covid" and "cities will remain the same despite covid" are pretty reductionist of much larger and more complicated trends I'm sure.

I'm aware I reduced the two sides in summarizing them above haha.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#133
post #118
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for JIRA. I'd rather learn a completely new system every 90 days than use JIRA.

I’m never sure if it’s actually core JIRA that is bad or if the problem is how customizable the thing is. It seems like every organization has added a bunch of custom fields and required bits that make it so annoying to use.

yeah my feeling (this doesn't excuse atlassian of course) is that JIRA is fantastic if and only if you have a full time JIRA wrangling PM that is competent. Otherwise it's a dumpster fire.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked from home for ~6 years and 2 companies. I really miss real whiteboards. The only thing worse that being on a software team that has no whiteboards, is being the only remote person on a team that has whiteboards in the office.

If you miss the physical act of writing on a whiteboard, then I would suggest looking into getting a drawing tablet (which you can use with any collaborative whiteboard app, or just screenshare a regular drawing program if you don't need to collaborate). You can get an entry-level Wacom for < $100, and it scratches the whiteboarding itch for me in a lot of situations.

I got one just for that reason, what about the whiteboard software though?

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cost of living in cities has been rising at an insane rate over the last decade, a large part of it is tech salaries. I know a ton of software engineers who only live in cities b/c that's where the jobs are. Places outside of cities also offer a lot of (different) enjoyable things to do. Presumably big companies moving jobs away from cities will have some impact.

San Francisco had just as many houses before tech moved in, the only thing tech did was make housing more expensive

>San Francisco had just as many houses before tech moved in

That's the problem, no?

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#136
I have a feeling this is going to end up similar to the "open office" fad. Lots of companies are going to go 100% on "forever work from home". Then in a year it's going to be not so much. That being said, I do believe "work from home" will become more of an option and far less frowned upon by employers. Then again, this is a white-collar problem. Blue collar and a few other industries still have to go to work. But who cares about them, right? It's only the white collar jobs that matter and should have a form of change and evolution to how they work. Those lowly blue collars and service industry peasants need to get back to work. It's far more vital for the important industries to hide away from the outside world, from its horrors and look down at the rest.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#137
post #118
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for JIRA. I'd rather learn a completely new system every 90 days than use JIRA.

I’m never sure if it’s actually core JIRA that is bad or if the problem is how customizable the thing is. It seems like every organization has added a bunch of custom fields and required bits that make it so annoying to use.

Even a vanilla JIRA core on their cloud is slow as molasses, while there is slight improvement over the last year, they seem to be using more react on the frontend in each update.

On a typical day moving tickets around , reviewing everyone's items and confluence with its WYSIWHG editor only approach is 20% of my day gone.

Just making the UI non blocking for every single action would double my productivity. Their mobile apps are definitely better than web, so it is not like they cannot build decent interface and application, The web app just smells of legacy and debt to me.

Even if its because of customizability they provide, it is really on them, to approve all sorts of plugins and for all straitjacketing they and/or AGILE ( as typically implemented) does to your development in the name of structure, restricting some of this customizability would not have hurt product more.

Ultimately like any other SaaS business they serve the buyer and not the user. They are interested in what sells more, more often than not it does not intersect with what the users need. Customization sells, saying NO doesn't in enterprise.

I guess we should be thankful they are not IBM or Oracle and build your kitchen sink and neighbours too

I am tempted at least once every few months to just build a better interface and frontend which isnt' crap. Management is not going change from JIRA. Developers / users would happily pay out of pocket for a saner interface which helps simply manage their items without fuss, most people don't really care about the backend and the fancy reports, burndown charts for the most part, those who do can use the official app .

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#138

The first thing that went through my head when I saw this headline was: "Huh, maybe I should send them a resume." I'm hype if this trend continues.

Same boat, founders seem level headed and the company seems heading in the right direction. For me a plus is the office locations in Australia. I wonder what the next companies to do this will be?

Everything I read about the founders makes me think they are great guys, I think they value the same things I do. They are also obviously smart and great business people too because they have very successful business. They also have a habit of acquiring products I like using. I was a user of both source tree and trello when they were acquired.

Having said all that, I really hate Jira and Confluence and would not like being a developer working on them. The front end is such a mess, I hate to think what the back end looks like.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#139

Unfortunately, game theory says that remote work will not stay once people can go back to work from the office safely. The reality is that there is a real advantage in working in person. Whether it’s increased trust, communication, or lower friction. We could see it pre-COVID in a he fact that there are barely any successful remote offices (let alone individuals). This means that employees would see advantages to com…

There are plenty of examples of successful fully remote teams and companies. Not sure why you are saying there aren't.

Because I’m not referring to fully remote teams but to the weird hybrid situation.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#140
post #100

Anyone else suspect we are going to see a massive deflation of cities?

Massive? No. For one thing I don't think enough companies will buy into the work from home forever. Although, those that want to work from home will most likely move from the cities, as it almost requires extra space. Plus there are other advantages to cities... Nightlife, variety of eateries, multitude of entertainment options. People. Shopping.
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