Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#151

Post by esrauch » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

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.

I don't know about this argument in general: it seems about the same as saying we shouldn't criticize people for drinking and driving because they should decide their own risk tolerance. Sure they're deciding the risk to themselves, but they don't necessarily get to unilaterally decide their tolerance to risking others without criticism.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#152

Post by tinyhouse » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

almost_usual wrote: post #70

christiansakai wrote: post #32

Curious, what makes this move (and all the rest of the WFH companies) permanent? Won't in the future when things go back to normal the cities will pressure the companies to have their employees go back into offices to make the economy moving? You know, coffee shops, restaurants, etc need to survive.

I would think San Francisco would be the only city really in trouble right now.

I don't think so. I don't live in SF but I'm sure it's a nice place to live. There's still a lot going on there, like universities, food, diversity, etc. Rent and house prices in the city are likely to go down, which is a good thing given how insanely expensive it is right now. Long term it might be even good for the city.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#153

Post by fuckCA » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

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Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#154

Post by coldpie » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

packetlost wrote: post #146

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.

5. don't like the barrier to communication, isolation, and distraction that WFH brings. It's not for everyone, don't act like WFH is some sort of amazing thing that only people in bad situations or who are incompetent dislike. 1. is straight up incorrect anyway, my schedule has gotten more consistent since working from home. It's entirely based on your own ability to start and stop your workday.

Yeah, I'm 7 months into being forced to WFH and I still hate it. I like the work/life separation going into the office brings. I actually liked my commute since I took the bus, so it was time to read and decompress. I like seeing and talking to my coworkers. I like having the variety of simply being out of the house. I like not having work stuff at home, so when I'm home, I don't have the temptation to do work. I'm glad WFH works for so many people, but it sure does not work for me.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#155

Post by ViViDboarder » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

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…

IBM calls it hotelling. You can book a desk and check in at any office.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#156

Post by dml2135 » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

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…

I'd say on top of that, remote work comes with some of the same communication problems as social media platforms. Without facetime, the assumption of goodwill starts to wear way.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#157

Post by tidepod12 » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #145

tidepod12 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 would absolutely share this with my "work friends" and even my current boss. When one of my previous bosses shared with me that he was having trouble at hom…

I'm not saying you shouldn't share anything with anyone, but there are some things where the upside of sharing isn't worth the potential downside. when dealing with someone who is responsible for evaluating your job performance, it's unwise to volunteer reasons for them to doubt that. it's hard to judge productivity, especially for engineers. if you go through a rough patch but say nothing, people might never notice…

> when dealing with someone who is responsible for evaluating your job performance, it's unwise to volunteer reasons for them to doubt that. it's hard to judge productivity, especially for engineers. if you go through a rough patch but say nothing, people might never notice that you were less productive for a month or two. if you tell your boss you're having an issue with alcohol/drugs, they might perceive a drop in productivity that didn't even exist!

My boss and I have a good enough relationship at work where I'm 1000% confident this wouldn't happen, and if said boss did "perceive" some kind of drop in productivity, their response would be to help me with that rather than turn it into a negative. Indeed, during COVID when I expressed to my boss that I was having a tough time, his immediate response was to ask how he could help and to offer me a couple days off to recharge.

And the reason we have that relationship is specifically because we treat each other as friends that also happen to have a working relationship, rather than letting the work relationship dominate all else.

Not everyone will have that kind of relationship with their boss, but I believe it is something everyone should aspire to rather than immediately rejecting it as even a possibility.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#158

Post by ketzo » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

pimterry wrote: post #137

geerlingguy wrote: post #7

WFH saves money for the company, I just hope that some of the expensive (to the company) perks like prime real estate, free meals, exercise programs, etc. can be translated into at least a minimal budget per employee of: Internet connection reimbursement, annual budget for workspace improvements (ideally with a large initial budget, like $1000 or more for desk, monitor, chair, etc.), and possibly some other perks. Bu…

Interestingly, Spain has already started on regulating to handle this. An english-language writeup: https://english.elpais.com/economy_and_business/2020-06-26/f... In short, for remote working employees (any employee that spends >30% of their time working outside an employer-designated office/client site/etc over 3+ months), all employers must have a written contract with the employee, that must: * Define the tools &…

Woah! Very cool. I hope to see something like that in the U.S. soon. The voluntary line strikes me as a little odd -- but I think that's because I believe soon, employment contracts will start mentioning "x days WFH per week/month" as a perk.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#159

Post by aranelsurion » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #31

As someone who has worked from home for a decade, I predict a mental health apocalypse in the near future. Working from home permanently requires support infrastructure not everyone has access to. It also requires a different approach to work altogether which, again, not everyone is capable of adopting. If you have family, work from home is great. But if you're single, staying cooped up alone at home can be a disaste…

I find this expectation really strange. It's like 'violence in games', if you refer to it everyone will nod, but how it became such a widely accepted fact is at best unclear.

I'm sure some cases of it happened somewhere, there are some papers, and some appeal to authority is a given, but do we really know if WFH equals mental health issues en masse?

For example, I wonder if: long commute, all the preparation before/after a work day, and resulting overall diminished free time causes more mental issues or not.

What about constant interruptions, loud neighbours and that white light above you, even though you'd rather have it yellow? All the inconveniences of sharing a place with other people, wouldn't any of this take a toll?

Seems to me when "office" is heard everyone thinks of that one nice summer evening after work and had a few beers yada yada, nobody seems to remember that cold-ass winter day where you would rather stay in 5 levels of blankets yet had to go to office, then slipped on ice and landed on your ass.

Maybe it's true and WFH will turn most people to madness. I'm just saying it's not an established fact of life, and opposite is also very much possible.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#160

Post by jarjoura » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

dimator wrote: post #147

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #121

I guess it's not surprising but I am super disappointed by some of the comments here that show a total lack of empathy for people who aren't like you. I mean, you love working from home? Congrats, more power to you. But the number of comments stating that "only people who are good at office politics like going to the office", "only incompetent managers need to see you in person", "your co-workers aren't your friends"…

I think no one is thinking past "but I'm more productive!", that's including employers and employees. Productivity is not the be-all end-all of a career! Human interaction (of any kind) is important, "wasting" time going to lunch with colleagues is important, serendipitous encounters at the coffee machine are important. I know for certain if my employer decides to go permanent remote, I'll be looking for another empl…

The first 2 months of lockdown, I was crazy productive, working till midnight every night. Then little by little I'm slowly finding it harder and harder to concentrate. My productivity has fallen enough that my manager has called it out. So, at this point the commute and my eating habits have been the only thing that has significantly improved from this WFH lifestyle.