Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 490 posts

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#371

Post by ghaff »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #329
infogulch wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a standard 2-monitor+HID setup at each station, that you connect to with your company issued laptop via a single usb-c cable?

I’d like to see a solution like the Smart Card-based Sun Ray become standard in offices. Pull up to any client terminal, swipe a card and get access to your desktop as you left it. Get a cheap laptop for remote access.

I'm not sure you really need that anymore. I can do 95% of my work from a Chromebook. Even if you need to do more locally a laptop works for most people without a Sun Ray type system (which can also be done through some cloud offerings).

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#372

Post by quicklyfrozen »

ashtonkem wrote: post #206
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…

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…

A home office sounds a lot cheaper then a place close enough to the office to reasonably commute every day to me. Spending an hour or two commuting 1 or 2 times a week is manageable, but 5 times is not.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#373

Post by ghaff »

xur17 wrote: post #363
ghaff wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Remote-only cuts out the in-person experience entirely Not necessarily. I work in a group that's very distributed and we get together (normally) a couple of times a year plus another once or twice with a larger group. Of course, that doesn't work if it's more like getting together in person every week or two. In any case, I agree it makes sense to collaborate. If you wander into the office and no one you know and wo…

I work at a 100% remote company, and we do this as well (before covid). We're a smaller company, so I'd be curious to hear how it scales, but at least for us I've found it to work pretty well.

I think it scales because, at a larger company, everyone isn't realistically going to get together anyway. So you get together in groups of various sizes. (And there are usually opportunities to get together with an even larger cross-section at things like user conferences.)

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#374

Post by maerF0x0 »

gotaran wrote: post #362
maerF0x0 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically WFH, whilst being forced to a local actually makes it more expensive. You could live in a tiny studio when your office was available. So now you must rent a sufficient space to include your home office -- In a locale where the price per sq ft is higher. someone invent a murphy bed that converts to a desk that converts to a toilet so our workforce can live in a space smaller than solitary confinement.

I wonder how the calculus plays out. You could be local but within "commuting distance" of the office, which could include Sacramento, Tracy, etc. for an SF office. I think you could get a 2BR in Sac for the price of a studio in SF. We might also see some exodus from the Bay Area, which would put a downward pressure on tech salaries till they hit some equilibrium. I also wonder what enforcement mechanisms exist short…

I too wonder about the equilibrium. I have heard that SF rents are down 20%, Which is probably understating the issue because many landlords opt for vacancy over lower prices (due to how loans work and the difficulty of raising once started).

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#375

Post by r3trohack3r »

nullsense wrote: post #368
maerF0x0 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but it could be a home office with 0 minute commute.

Ah yes, my lonely concrete bunker beneath my house.

I understand the sentiment here. But there are different lifestyles. For some, home is where they spend a majority of their time outside of work. I've optimized my home around my lifestyle.

WFH doesn't require building a sensory deprivation tank.

Since going remote, I work in a swimming pool about 50% of the time. I have a good pair of noise cancelling headphones, a Panasonic toughbook, and a "floating standing desk" (a raft turned upside down). I smoke a cigar, sip a nice whiskey, and crank through my work. Then I go spend time with my family and friends.

It's not quite a concrete bunker beneath my house. But I'm not coming back to an office anytime soon.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#376

Post by nitrogen »

zwayhowder wrote: post #369
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The usage stats for our MS Teams instance shows this. Before COVID hardly any messages, after a massive increase as you'd expect, but private messages outnumber public messages 10:1 or more. Several times I've found out that there are multiple private chat groups all for the same P1 or Project instead of using Channels that all staff can see.

I saw the same thing with Slack stats at a company. Plotted over time, private messages started at like 10%, but eventually reached something like 80% after a couple of years.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#377

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

ghaff wrote: post #371
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to see a solution like the Smart Card-based Sun Ray become standard in offices. Pull up to any client terminal, swipe a card and get access to your desktop as you left it. Get a cheap laptop for remote access.

I'm not sure you really need that anymore. I can do 95% of my work from a Chromebook. Even if you need to do more locally a laptop works for most people without a Sun Ray type system (which can also be done through some cloud offerings).

The advantage of working primarily on a thin client is that turning off the client doesn’t stop the computation. Also, the worst part of modern IT tech is messing with projectors/keyboards/etc. for presentations and meetings. I’d much rather swipe my card at the projector and have my current desktop automagically broadcast to the projector. (AirPlay is pretty close to this, I guess).

Anyways, the killer feature is a remote-first workflow that treats your client device as ephemeral: you can cobble something like this together, but I’d think that the integration of an end-to-end solution built and maintained by one company

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#378

Post by [deleted] »

ashtonkem wrote: post #300
sib wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But for what benefit? Will the office be full sized (forfeiting the cost savings to the business), or will teams have to negotiate which days they’re supposed to come in (forfeiting a large amount of the team building benefits). It just seems like a lot more work and hassle than being fully colocated or fully remote.

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#379

Post by gomox »

NationalPark wrote: post #98
swalsh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really is the way to do it in my opinion. Collaboration is one of the hardest parts to do remote (though I think VR could make this better)

Let's start with fixing the barely perceptible delay in regular video conferencing that causes the, "No, you talk" thing we all enjoy.

This is more likely caused by people videoconferencing with computer speakers, than by network delay.

Re: Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH

#380

Post by [deleted] »

hinkley wrote: post #342
throwaway98az8 wrote: post #179

Context: I was in the interview pipeline before/when this announced, so I've gotten some additional clarification on the logistics. I think this is strictly worse than providing employees with the option of where to work (office/remote/some WFH). Something missing in this announcement is that you still need to live in one of the main cities with offices (SF, Seattle, Austin, Dublin) in order to receive full pay. Movi…

> but you don't have a nice office with meals/snacks I was watching an interview recently, might have been buried in the middle of The Social Dilemma, where the speaker mentioned that this class of concierge service risks infantilizing people, and in particular in a time when code that young programmers author effects more and more of the population, that's dangerous. The implication was that we need people to grow u…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN