Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever • Hacker News Board

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#341

Post by jjcm » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

bargle0 wrote: post #258

I feel like permanent WFH is outsourcing real estate costs to the worker. This isn’t a big deal for some, since one may live alone or already have a home office, but it gets burdensome if there is more than one home worker in a household.

FWIW Atlassian has been giving us a bunch of perks to account for this since the COVID-wfh started. We've had extra days off to account for the stress of a different lifestyle and home office budgets to purchase things we need.

It's not going so far as to pay us enough to offset the rent of a dedicated home office room, but they're still quite nice perks. The Australian government is helping out quite a bit too - there are many additional benefits this tax season for those who are working from home.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

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Post by jjcm » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

tomerico wrote: post #48

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…

Normally yes, but we have one major difference with Atlassian - our teams are split between SF and Sydney (for the most part, we have other offices but those are the major ones). Even before COVID we had a pretty strong remote culture. We were doing video chat based meetings where everyone dials in separately even before COVID hit. We also acquired Trello, which was a remote-first company. There's a LOT of push internally to make sure remote people are first party citizens in the company.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

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Post by alfiedotwtf » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

nmfisher wrote: post #307

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was also here on HN comments telling everyone not to criticise the Australian Government’s COVIDSafe App while not disclosing Atlassian had a contract as part of the app’s development

Really? I'm Australian and that's the first I had heard of it (either the fact that Atlassian had a contract, or that he commented on HN about it).

Here’s the comment:

“Turn the HN angry mob mode off - it’s not helpful. We’re all in this together.”

When asked by non technical people “Should I install this app? Is my data / privacy safe? Is it true it doesn’t track my location?” - say “Yes” and help them understand” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22986426

And here’s an article:

“Australian tech darling Atlassian is among the five private companies that helped the federal government build its COVID-19 contact tracing app.”

https://www.innovationaus.com/atlassian-and-the-covidsafe-te...

The fact that they didn’t wait for Apple and Google’s contract tracking API and instead went for an app that needs the phone turned on and in the foreground for it to work properly is the reason why nobody is using it :headdesk:

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

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Post by chronofar » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:36 AM UTC

d1zzy wrote: post #129

chronofar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that there is a real advantage in working in person. Whether it’s increased trust, communication, or lower friction. There is no inherent advantage to "working in person." Lower trust or communication or higher friction are not inherent to working remotely, they are the product of poor and overconfident management (at least in tech, given our forum here) and can be seen in any number of environments.…

People are different and they have different needs and skills. Working in meatspace is different from working remotely so those needs and skills may better match one model or the other. That is, SWEs aren't bug tracking robots that only need to communicate online using emotionless text.

To be sure different models fit different situations, and there are other needs people have aside from getting shit done, namely social interaction (which is at its root the biggest cause of resistance). If you don't get those needs meet elsewhere, the workplace is historically a good place to do so. But of course there are all sorts of ways outside a traditional office to optimize for this.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

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Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:37 AM UTC

james412 wrote: post #146

errantspark wrote: post #46

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.

You'd honestly work for the folk responsible for the BitBucket redesign, or the 6 billion lines of dynamic JS loaded for every Jira page? I'd sooner work the curb while living in a coal bunker

I know bashing on Jira is a popular pastime on HN, but I'm always surprised folks are not more introspective around why it's still so popular in the enterprise. It's because there are a million and one ways that teams like to work, and any one project has lots of different stakeholders with competing needs, and there really isn't any other tool that can scale out to this many use cases.

I've certainly pulled my hair out a million times with Jira, but TBH I'm extremely impressed with their redesign. They've really scaled back the complexity IMO while still giving my team the customizability we need (we started on Trello and quickly hit roadblocks).

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

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Post by Tomis02 » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:41 AM UTC

alicemaz wrote: post #322

tomerico wrote: post #48

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…

>The reality is that there is a real advantage in working in person. it depends what their goals are. having worked in-office and remote for the same company, it's way easier to get shit done in the office. at least if you're reasonably extroverted/persuasive/bold. there are so many times I was able to walk up to someone's desk and spend ten minutes to save multiple weeks of protocol and runaround. partly because it'…

> I was able to walk up to someone's desk and spend ten minutes to save multiple weeks of protocol and runaround. partly because it's easier to apply pressure, but also partly because communicating face-to-face is so much higher bandwidth

Let's ignore how you interrupting someone cost them potentially hours of productivity.

I agree face-to-face is higher bandwidth for easy/simple topics. "Bob, what's the mainframe password" is easier shouted than written, and the reply likewise (assuming Bob knows it by heart).

It gets tricky when the topic is complicated or when Bob is distracted and confused. You might get a half-assed dismissive and incomplete answer (which you may or may not notice), or it might take Bob much longer to figure the answer out than if you had messaged it to him.

The quality of your communication depends on many factors, and your perception may not necessarily match reality.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

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Post by onetimemanytime » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:41 AM UTC

ryanSrich wrote: post #217

cblconfederate wrote: post #162

One thing that is not often mentioned is these threads is how this is particularly beneficial for European workers. They live in cities that are already small and dense, generally don't depend on the office for their socialization, internet speeds are good (due to density probably) and family life is balanced. Plus a lot of them are already accustomed to working remotely. They 'll probably be able to compete for a lo…

Which is hilarious to me as someone that has hired devs from Europe for a while now. Why compete with FAANG trying to pay new grads $300k when you can pay an experienced developer from Europe $100k? I honestly never understood it.

>>Why compete with FAANG trying to pay new grads $300k when you can pay an experienced developer from Europe $100k? I honestly never understood it.

Because $300K vs $100K makes very little difference to them when they're printing money. One idea from a top dev can make the whole thing pay itself and then some, for years.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

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Post by TheReveller » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #334

war1025 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying these are standard benefits in Europe? You didn't make it clear in your post, though I think that must be the angle you're coming from.

Except for the 13th month bonus, I’d say it’s pretty basic. You’d get those benefits working at a supermarket. Five weeks vacation is a legal minimum. Most companies I worked for here in Denmark will give you six. It’s technically not five weeks, but 25 days.

I worked in Switzerland, the 13th month wasn't a bonus, they simply took your salary, divided that by 13, that was your monthly payment and you got 2 of them in December.

Also many bills are due on the first of January for the whole next year e.g. insurance. So it was kinda like a holiday and large bill windfall, but it wasn't additional to salary.

That was just one company, maybe other countries or employers are different.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

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Post by wubbalerfa » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #2

I hope those now remote employees have access to some good issue tracking, repo hosting, and collaboration/documentation tools. Else they'll be forced to use something like Jira, Confluence, Bit Bucket, and such, which suck...

For anyone who is already used to Jira and considering switching, think again. Monday seems to be popular as the "much faster, responsive" competitor if the marketing is to believed.

I've used it for 6 months - it's garbage. At least, absolutely ZERO times better than Jira as an overall productivity tool.

I can't tell you how many times issues have never loaded (see: blank screen), painstakingly prioritised lists of HUNDREDS of issues that have had their ordering completely scrambled, to name two off the top of my head.

If you hate Jira, think about whether it's the thing you hate that you're used to. Because you're absolutely going to be trading for a NEW thing that you hate, and have to learn to use from scratch.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#350

Post by noir_lord » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

cblconfederate wrote: post #162

One thing that is not often mentioned is these threads is how this is particularly beneficial for European workers. They live in cities that are already small and dense, generally don't depend on the office for their socialization, internet speeds are good (due to density probably) and family life is balanced. Plus a lot of them are already accustomed to working remotely. They 'll probably be able to compete for a lo…

My company forced me back into a windowless massive open office back in June, I handed in my notice yesterday to take a better paid 100% remote position with a company that has been 100% remote for years before this crisis.

That it also comes with a substantial pay rise, zero travel and the opportunity to work on stuff I actually find interesting is just a gigantic cherry on the cake.

It was by far the largest factor in getting me to go look elsewhere though not the only one.

I was frank (though polite) with my boss (since I'm a lead and I have zero intention of ever returning) about it - they are going to haemorrhage their senior developers and I know stuff he doesn't yet about others leaving.