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/a…
Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH
191–200 of 490 posts
Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
What evidence do you seek? It is obvious to me that the way you interact with people face-to-face is different from the way you would do with online chat.
That can be a good thing for non-charismatic types. I know that I've hurt my career at times in past due to in-person failures like being visibly angry or raising voice over dumb statements/power-positioning by leader-types. Being remote has helped me throttle those reactions and not be so public about my feelings.
Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH
#193Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may not realize that the $500 chair, the ping pong table and the beer fridge effectively comes out of everyone's paycheck.
Right, but is that money coming back to employees in the form of pay bumps now that those things are gone?
Of course, with new contracts being negotiated, not having to pay for all these expenses will give an employer more leeway in terms of salary. However, remote work also increases the candidate pool, so the net effect is going to be lower salaries.
Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The tax deficit for this year is going to really hurt the city. SF makes most of its income in tourism and tech. There isn’t much travel right now and there is a tech exodus. So the deficit is growing everyday. Bars and restaurants have been either on strict lockdown or reduced capacity since early March, a lot of them that have been around for decades are closing. So now we have an exodus of small businesses, tech w…
Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH
#196WeWork still has a future... I think companies will increasingly adopt this model as the "big guys" (ie MSFT, AAPL, GOOGL etc..) start to give clarity to their employees that WFH will be the norm. To counter-balance the solitude, offices will be team building destinations. WeWork may transform itself into a "business travel company" powered by technology of course. Companies will host off sites once or twice a month…
Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH
#197To 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…
Yeah this is 100% not remote work.
Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/a…
The thing mostly talked about is social isolation and it seems pretty straight forward that going from time in the office to the same time at home reduces social contact.
Losing in-person work relationships at the same time as social relationships is rough. Luckily I get along well with the person I live with, but the lack of ad-hoc social interaction is unsettling.
Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH
#199To 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…
"Remote-only cuts out the in-person experience entirely, which is problematic for building teams and culture" This is stated as fact everywhere but I've not seen supporting evidence anywhere. I spend about as much time in my day speaking to other people as I would have done productively and by choice before. The only difference now is that I'm more able to avoid extraneous meetings and other drags on my time that don…
The people who say this are the people you never see doing any work. They use the office as a social gathering place. They seemingly have no real job, despite a lofty title and high salary. They are the bane of existence for high functioning employees.
This is one of the few hills I will die on. I've never heard of a productive critical employee complaining about not being in an office. Every single one loves remote work because they can actually get work done.
Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
It makes me even sadder when people's social circles and even their entire social network align strictly with work. I've met plenty of good friends at work, but I'm very happy my social network includes mostly people doing different things with their life. It means there is much more breadth of perspective, and you realize very easily that work isn't everything. It sounds like you also might not have had much experie…
For me, being co-workers is just one small facet of our friendship. We do talk about work sometimes, just like sometimes we talk about sports teams we have in common or other hobbies. But we don't only talk about work. I don't feel that my perspective is limited at all because my co-workers have introduced me to their spouses, who might be in totally different industries, or to new hobbies such as surfing or soccer, or brought me along on trips to new places or encouraged me to volunteer. All of these things have expanded my perspective greatly, and if you trace them back far enough, all of them are originating from my co-workers.
In your startup example, I have been on teams where this culture was the case, and certainly with some people I have completely lost touch after they/I left the team. But for others, even though we worked together work was not the dominating reason that we were friends. When I left the team we lost that one facet of our relationship, but our friendship still survives because we have many other facets that facilitate it.
So I think the problem isn't when someone's social circle aligns strictly with work. I think that's fine. I think the problem you are describing is when it turns into a "work-dominant social circle" rather than "a social circle that just happens to have the same employer in common".
Furthermore, I think the "anti work friend" attitude is counterproductive to this. People are saying "don't spend your time building friendships with co-workers because if you leave work you will lose your friend". But if you carry this attitude and don't build a friendship that is strong outside of work, then of course your perspective is going to be limited to work, and of course you will lose your friendship with that person once your work ends. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.