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Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

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Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#251

Post by stetrain »

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"…

See also all the posts about "I had to work from home during a pandemic, with forced restrictions on other activities and social gatherings, while also home schooling my children and dealing with an inordinate amount of stress and disruption to my life, therefore I hate work from home and would never consider it given the choice."

The last 6 months isn't really representative of why we should or should not be encouraging WFH, but it at least seems to have opened more doors to accommodating it as an option in companies that would have previously been against it.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#252

Post by InitialLastName »

nevinera wrote: post #112
tipsysquid wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

You don't think that in the next one, people will be more willing to believe that all the freezer trucks full of bodies in the streets actually exist, and that the nurses and doctors all over the world saying "this is really bad" aren't crisis actors? Because I'm inclined to agree we're screwed.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#253

Post by Smithalicious »

golergka wrote: post #122
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'm single, and transition to WFH has made a great improvement to my social health. Sure, all people need social interactions. But these interactions don't need to be defined by work. I work in caffe 10 meters from my apartment. Sit with laptop in the park. Meet with friends. I don't drive, don't use public transport, but walk an awful lot. And thanks with great, mostly asynchronous communication at my workplace, I s…

This describes my feelings entirely!

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#254

Post by Wowfunhappy »

loganfrederick wrote: post #213
silentsea90 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of us naysayers failed to appreciate the foresight that Mr Neumann and Softbank displayed. Joke's on us :D

The fundamentals were not bad ideas. Regus has been doing things similar to WeWork for decades. Neumann committing fraud, poor cash management, and self-dealing conflicts of interest are what killed WeWork. Not the coworking space concept.

The pandemic also would have hit them pretty hard had they not semi-collapsed a few months before.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#255

Post by scatters »

aranelsurion wrote: post #159
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/a…

> 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?

Are you describing working in an office or working from home?

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#256

Post by ghaff »

sib wrote: post #219
ashtonkem wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like you, I am genuinely baffled by "WFH 4 days a week" arrangements (as compared to "WFH when you have errands that make it necessary", which is pretty common). If I have to come into the office 1 day a week, then I still have to foot the bill for a home office within driving range of the office, which sucks. I think at once a quarter you're starting to look at the ability to live on the other side of the country an…

I think coming in to the office 1x / week would let you live quite a bit further away than coming in 5x / week. At least for me, I could do a 60-90-minute drive to work 1 day per week, but would not want to 5 days.

I had a job for a bit over a year where I commuted 90+ minutes door to door many days. Even though I could take the train if I wanted to (after driving to the station), it still got old and I wouldn't have wanted to do it long term. I'm about the same to go into my company's Boston office now--I'm technically out of our suburban office and in practice I've been remote for a few years--and it makes for a long day but one day a week would be pretty doable.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#257

Post by haswell »

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"…

Thank you for highlighting this. As others have said, I could not agree more.

As a Product Manager, working remotely 100% of the time is absolute hell. And I say this as someone who was already working from home ~70% of the time before (and I was mostly ok with that).

I also wanted to pick on a few of the categories you mentioned:

> "only incompetent managers need to see you in person"

Some of the best work I've done is when I'm able to go brainstorm in a room with my leadership. Lacking the ability to do this as we plan our next release, or the next 3 year strategy or whatnot is extremely difficult.

Having competent management means that they understand when this is valuable and when it's not.

> "your co-workers aren't your friends"

I hear this a lot, and I have to feel bad for people who have never experienced true friendship at work. At each of my jobs, I've made lifelong friends. Friends I've since vacationed with, stood up as a groomsman in a weeding for, etc. This is part of what made those jobs so rewarding.

I think the general thought is that "jobs change, so that 'friend' might not be around next week", and that's true. But in my experience, if they're true friends, changing jobs doesn't change that.

This says more about me than anything, but where else am I going to meet friends?

---

All of this to say, in addition to being tone-deaf in light of the current reality in the world, these sentiments are also suspect under normal circumstances.

These things may be true for some people at their place of employment, or for them personally, but it's hard to understand where this comes from.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#258

Post by syspec »

trimbo wrote: post #229
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…

Not too long ago, Dropbox signed the largest office lease in SF history[1]. What changes are you making to Dropbox's RE plan in light of this? [1] - https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/10/10/dro...

I know the Pinterest cancelled their lease, I forget how much but they had to pay 90M to do it, but they got out of it

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#259

Post by jermaustin1 »

h327 wrote: post #226
ryandrake wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your office is in SF, WFH 4 days a week doesn't let you live in ultra-low-cost rural Iowa but it could let you at least work in slightly-lower-cost Modesto or even Redding. Not ideal but better than a $4K/mo SF apartment. I think I'd be willing to live with a 4 hour commute once a week (or get your private pilot's license and you're about 1.5 hours away). Not convenient but do-able.

The idea of flying to work is fun, and I have seen it pop up in a lot of these WFH discussions. But even if you have your GA license, you'll need to rent or own the plane, pay directly or indirectly for hangar space and fuel, and deal with the air traffic congestion that would arise from more than just a handful of people trying this trick. In my opinion these barriers make private flying too dissimilar to driving a…

I was looking into it for commuting from Pueblo, CO to Denver. The place I was interviewing was a short walk and bus ride from an air field, and Pueblo is about 20-40% the cost of a similar commutable home in Denver, the flight (which I have done a dozen times in MSFS) is only 55 minutes. So round trip with commuting to and from the airports/fields, doing preflight, and parking, was only 3 hours which is about the time it takes one way by car assuming normal traffic.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#260

Post by m0zg »

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…

That's the way it should be IMO. It's idiotic to have to drag oneself to the office to do work which can be done just as well, if not better, without getting out of bed. It's also bad to not be able to get teams together from time to time, to brainstorm, discuss things, and just plain get to know each other. I hope companies find a happy middle ground at some point, and I also hope managers can figure out how to manage people effectively in such circumstances. Currently nobody at the previously "butts in chairs" companies knows how to do that, and my manager friends at places like Google, FB and MS are unsure if they're "holding it right".
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