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Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

businessinsider.com

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Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#111

Post by leetcrew »

tidepod12 wrote: post #67
thrownaway954 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not trying to sound like a dick... everyone has to get out of the house and making actual friends in life. co-workers aren't friends, bosses aren't friends, clients aren't friends, work relationships aren't friends. we all need human interaction... join a club, a gym, yoga, bike club, whatever, just interact with people that doesn't involve talking about work. and sitting home and playing video games while good, isn'…

>co-workers aren't friends, bosses aren't friends, clients aren't friends, work relationships aren't friends. It really saddens me whenever I see this (apparently common) sentiment on HN. Through every job I've had, I've met some of my very best life-long friends. My wedding party is over half people that I met at work. A couple of my former bosses are people I see every couple of months (pre-covid) and are invited t…

HN takes it a bit too far, but there is some wisdom in maintaining a boundary between work and personal stuff. like suppose you are struggling to recover from alcoholism. you might want to confide in your close friends. you might not want to share this with friends from work. you almost certainly should not share this with your boss, even if you consider them a friend.

I treat work friends as a sort of "probationary friend". I'm happy to meet up and do stuff outside of work, but I'm a bit more guarded than I would be with someone I don't work with. I might hesitate to introduce them to some of my more "out there" friends (for whatever reason I seem to attract a lot of very weird people). once we no longer work together, they can just be a normal friend.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#112

Post by nevinera »

tipsysquid wrote: post #90
monsieurbanana wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not telling you to completely isolate, but this is wrong: > I keep telling my friends that you can't eliminate risk, just mitigate it to an amount that you're comfortable with, and that amount is different for everyone This is a pandemic, any risks you consciously take are risks you're forcing the people around you to take too. No single person can set the amount of risks he wants to take, it has to be decided gl…

>No single person can set the amount of risks he wants to take, it has to be decided globally. This is preposterous. Each individual must evaluate their own risk tolerance. If you're waiting on the world to decide something for you, you're playing life as a waiting game. Please don't shame people for having a different risk tolerance than you.

The reason he's confused is that he's thinking of isolation in terms of its impact on community transmission rate. That should definitely be part of your personal calculations (evaluating your personal risk without concern for any risk you create for others is sociopathic, if common).

But the truth is that even the most basic measures of isolation would suffice to properly mitigate the community risk if the community would broadly take them, and the most severe personal isolation on my part will not protect the community in any meaningful way if they don't.

Wearing a mask when it's appropriate and avoiding crowded/unsafe spaces is really all we owe our community. Anything further you do should be based on your personal evaluation of risks - I'm more isolated because we have high-risk relatives that we see regularly.

Edit: It's worth noting that this position is specific to the pandemic in question - it's totally plausible that we will get another pandemic later that requires us all to take more stringent isolation measures. And the evidence suggests that we will probably all die.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#113

Post by [deleted] »

johnward wrote: post #83
dhouston wrote: post #33

To be clear (if you only read the headline :)), not entirely remote. Solo work at home, collaborative work in "studios", basically reimagining the offices into collaborative/convening spaces that you go into from ~once/week to once a quarter depending on team/role. Remote-only cuts out the in-person experience entirely, which is problematic for building teams and culture; and ad hoc "WFH whenever you feel like it" ge…

> which is problematic for building teams and culture; Why? I've been remote for about 8 years. I don't think I've had any problems building relationships. The only thing you miss from the office is the time spent screwing around with co-workers. I guess you could consider that "Team building".

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#114

Post by thrownaway954 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #57
thrownaway954 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not trying to sound like a dick... everyone has to get out of the house and making actual friends in life. co-workers aren't friends, bosses aren't friends, clients aren't friends, work relationships aren't friends. we all need human interaction... join a club, a gym, yoga, bike club, whatever, just interact with people that doesn't involve talking about work. and sitting home and playing video games while good, isn'…

> co-workers aren't friends, bosses aren't friends, clients aren't friends, work relationships aren't friends. I consider my coworkers to be my friends and it's one of the reasons I like working at my current company. I agree that having lots of different outlets for connection is great, and I also acknowledge that there are a variety of ways in which work can complicate friendships. But, if I'm going to spend 40+ ho…

to be honest...

i did that for almost 20 years where i previously worked. i thought of my co-workers as family and friends and it got me no where and caused lots of stress (its hard to say no to someone when they are friends). i don't know, maybe it had more todo with co-dependency than anything else.

now i've been working at a place for almost 3 years and i'm not friends with a single person here. i don't let these people know my business and have a complete separation of personal and work relationship. i honestly have less stress cause i can say no without giving a crap if my co-worker gets mad at me or doesn't want to talk to me (which i prefer). i do my job and go home to be with my friends and family.

also, if another opportunity comes my way, i have no problem giving my 2 weeks notice and packing my bags. life is a lot better now.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#115

Post by zeveb »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #28
geerlingguy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to think of the junior engineers, who might not have a ton of disposable income. In the before times, they would be put at a workstation with a $2-3000 desk, a $500+ chair, reliable Internet and power, and usually a new(ish) computer, monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Those engineers don't have the income to get all those pieces for home use; they'll get a cheap Ikea desk and chair, a middling-quality monitor and…

I think you'll see something akin to the Joel Test [1], but for how companies manage remote. What equipment are they providing? Are you getting a one time allowance to buy your home office setup (desk, external monitor, etc)? Are you getting a stipend towards your internet connection? Are they providing a corporate managed mobile device (why are you using your personal device for work!?)? Do they provide you with a s…

> Are you getting a one time allowance to buy your home office setup (desk, external monitor, etc)?

Note that this really should be a recurring stipend. Nothing lasts forever; everything has a service life. I think a three- or four-year depreciation makes sense on a lot of these items, although this is probably something which should be considered an industry standard.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#116

Post by sequoia »

I'm very curious how we're going to look back on this moment in 3 or 5 years time. Is "let's try WFH" the corporate equivalent of "let's try an open marriage" for couples on the rocks, i.e. a "beginning of the end?"

Just wildly speculating here, the result could be the opposite. But it strikes me as possible that this could been seen in retrospect as a damaging trend, sort of like open offices.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#117

Post by rootusrootus »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #104
bob33212 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done this for years. I have seen that some people don't like it for the following reasons. 1. They prefer a predictable schedule. 2. They don't like being at home ( family or workspace issues) 3. They are good at or enjoy office politics. 4. They are incompetent managers and they don't know how to manage engineers other than looking over shoulders and taking attendence.

> 3. They are good at or enjoy office politics. As a counterpoint, we had a mix of remote department and in-office departments at my last company. Transitioning to fully remote made marked an increase in politics every time. It sounds counterintuitive at first, but fully remote moves even more conversations to side channels. At the office it’s hard to have secret exclusionary meetings without other people noticing ev…

> It sounds counterintuitive at first, but fully remote moves even more conversations to side channels

I am 100% experiencing this right now. It isn't negative, exactly, at least not yet, but a lot of informal discussions between teams that used to occur in the hallway, break room, or wherever, just doesn't happen spontaneously when we are all remote. So it goes through more traditional channels, which makes it more formal and more political in many cases.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#118

Post by leetcrew »

dubcanada wrote: post #82
jlos wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are trade offs with that too. If you use a home office for a write off, you have to pay tax when you sell the home

I assume that's in the US? You don't have to do that in Canada.

I don't think you get to write off work expenses as a W2 (ie, hourly or salaried) employee in the US. pretty sure only independent contractors get to do this. otherwise, everyone would be doing this for commuting expenses.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#119

Post by geuis »

This idea of the future of work being permanently changed is really prevalent right now. It’s not going to be. Future of work, that is.

We’re in the middle of the storm right now. We’ve all been bailing water for 7 months or so, and lots of people think that we’ll be bailing water forever now, even after the storm clears.

I’d wager that within a couple years at most of COVID being squashed, most if not all the companies declaring themselves remote-first and remote-permanent will reverse those policies. Despite the added costs, there are just too many advantages to offices.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#120

Post by keiferski »

derefr wrote: post #109
dhouston wrote: post #33

To be clear (if you only read the headline :)), not entirely remote. Solo work at home, collaborative work in "studios", basically reimagining the offices into collaborative/convening spaces that you go into from ~once/week to once a quarter depending on team/role. Remote-only cuts out the in-person experience entirely, which is problematic for building teams and culture; and ad hoc "WFH whenever you feel like it" ge…

> collaborative work in "studios", basically reimagining the offices into collaborative/convening spaces that you go into from ~once/week to once a quarter depending on team/role. I’m forgetting their name for them, but IBM has been doing this for decades now. They buy up office space in every major city, and then, rather than permanently stationing any teams there, essentially make all such spaces into private-acces…

Isn't this basically the same thing as Regus?
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