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

Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

nbloom.people.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 570 posts

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#241

Post by j4yav »

itronitron wrote: post #230
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #29

I've been 100% remote and run remote teams since 2014 and I promise that it won't stick for the broader society. Here's why: 1. Socializing is the primary activity that happens at work for the vast majority of workers. The gal or guy coming by your desk to "check in" or "see how your weekend was" etc... is literally where they find their social outlets and personal connections. 2. Managers like to be able to watch th…

A close friend of mine has a coworker who calls them whenever they are not in meetings (shows up as online in whatever chat thingy their organization uses.) and wastes at least two hours of their time everyday. Are there strategies that fully remote companies take to limit that type of time wasting?

Generally, remote companies prefer async work. GitLab has a great guide on how to get started, and I'm also building an app (https://asyncgo.com). Other founders are building different tools with different approaches but the same goal in mind as well.

Basically you want to move as much focused work as you can to async collaboration and save realtime for more freeform, relaxed communication. It's more efficient and also less draining to work that way.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#242

Post by woutr_be »

I work for a large multinational bank with close to 100K employees, and while especially in Asia, people have been working from home for almost a year, I fully expected the business to force everyone to come back to the office as soon as possible.

But much to my surprise, we recently learned that we'll be allowed to continue working from home for up to 3 days a week. In a recent survey, most people preferred to work from home, but also missed the human interaction from time to time. And it looks like there was no negative impact when people started working from home.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#243

Post by canofbars »

WalterGR wrote: post #3

I haven’t read all 63 pages, but I’m surprised that the abstract doesn’t mention: All the $$$ that businesses get to save by eliminating or reducing office real estate, including $$$ saved by pushing some of those costs onto employees.

I have saved an absolute fortune not having to go to the office and having my own kitchen for lunch.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#244

Post by u801e »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #146
irrational wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This is the main reason I prefer remote working. I don’t like socializing. I’m there to work, not to chit chat. You’re not my friend, your a fellow worker. 2. Time to get a better manager who trusts you. 3. Commuting is a waste of time. I roll out of bed and immediately start working. The company loses on time I could be working by having me commute. 4. Yeah, I definitely can’t relate to this one.

For something you're going to spend your life doing, it's a horrible prospect to not expect to make friends at work. As a child did you spend 12 years not making friends in school, since school is for learning and not socialization?

The way children socialize compared to adults is completely different. So you really can't make a valid comparison between school and work in terms of socialization.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#245

Post by flatline »

croutonwagon wrote: post #4

The problem is multi-faceted. While this is entirely anecdotal I have observed a LOT of time theft by employees. And been asked more than ever to investigate employee behavior (even when I normally try and advise against the approach) Some more egregious than others. While most probably aren’t going to awol for a day at a time I know a LOT of people that now spend working hours doing leisure things. Maybe that’s a su…

One of the points that I think is underlying your post is that this is not normal remote working conditions. People are stuck at home, with kids, spouses, etc., and all other social outlets shut off. Or they are completely alone and isolated. On the flip side an all-remote team keeps the in-office people from having the advantage of hallways conversations and other low-friction means of communication that end up excluding remote employees.

It’s often difficult to gauge employee productivity. I do think that as managers we kid ourselves that we can actually improve individual productivity in any significant, sustainable way, other than helping people remove roadblocks like, you know, the kids screaming in the background while you are trying to code.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#246

Post by u801e »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #195
irrational wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This is the main reason I prefer remote working. I don’t like socializing. I’m there to work, not to chit chat. You’re not my friend, your a fellow worker. 2. Time to get a better manager who trusts you. 3. Commuting is a waste of time. I roll out of bed and immediately start working. The company loses on time I could be working by having me commute. 4. Yeah, I definitely can’t relate to this one.

Some companies will go out of their way to force remote workers to socialize. When your boss sets up an online game you can't really say no.

I have said no. I just say I have to help my kids with their virtual class or some other excuse to get out of it.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#247

Post by rapsey »

dv_dt wrote: post #173
ashtonkem wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the things you’re describing are actually the consequences of things being really broken. Some of that is obvious (e.g. point 2), but the rest is subtle. My biggest concern is #1. While everyone has always socialized at work, it seems like modern Americans depend more on work for socialization than ever before. That is probably not a good thing, especially since modern professionals job hop more than ever. A…

#1 is because Americans spend way to much time at work, so much time that it's difficult to find time to socialize out of work. People are social animals so they'll increase their interaction there (also lowering productivity in office). I think WFH coupled with reduced hour days or 4 day weeks would be a much better combo for high productivity in the office.

Americans also start work really late. 9 to 5 takes up the whole day. Where I am at most start at 7 or 8.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#248

Post by toomanybeersies »

amw-zero wrote: post #155
Fordec wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these tackle the one aspect that trumps everything else in the corporate world. Is this better for the company? Even if the majority of companies see things this way, they will return to the office. But those that succeed, survive, thrive or dominate a market will do whatever that makes them successful along the way. It doesn't matter if people like routine if the other guy beats you on revenue, time to marke…

Working together in person has to be 10 times more effective. Major doubt that anyone thinks remote working is actually more effective from the companies perspective. The only argument I ever here is that antisocial people prefer not seeing other people and getting their work done alone.

My productivity probably doubled when I moved to remote working last year.

In the morning, I don't need to commute an hour to the office, giving me an extra hour of sleep. My workspace is also superior to what I'd ever get in the office.

But the biggest boost in my productivity has come from the lack of distractions when working from home. If I'm trying to focus on something, I can set my status as busy and mute notifications, leaving me to work in peace without interruption.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#249

Post by gfodor »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #29

I've been 100% remote and run remote teams since 2014 and I promise that it won't stick for the broader society. Here's why: 1. Socializing is the primary activity that happens at work for the vast majority of workers. The gal or guy coming by your desk to "check in" or "see how your weekend was" etc... is literally where they find their social outlets and personal connections. 2. Managers like to be able to watch th…

A good chunk of these get wiped out if you get remote social presence via VR or AR.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#250

Post by drschwabe »

adamc wrote: post #172
wisty wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worth looking into "theory of the firm" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm Why should employees even exist? Shouldn't firms just sack everyone, then hire contractors? I often hear advocates of remote work talk about "presenteeism" and how managers need to just focus more on outputs. This is fine, but if they can do that why not sack everyone and just hire contractors and pay for the outpu…

Based on the contractors we've hired at various points, you get what you give. Most of the contractor code worked, but had poor maintenance characteristics. Which makes sense: they weren't going to be maintaining it. Their job was to generate a lot of code quickly. So, a future where that happens will require either very tight managerial oversight (pipe dream), or will lead to a bunch of stuff that is brittle as hell…

Excellent insight. And agree to your theoretical conclusion to some extent.

To share contractor perspective: a problem I've identified is ambiguous overlap of ownership/maintainer role of project code between contractor and contractee staff (or lack thereof). So a slightly alternate conclusion is that it's up to the contractor to exert authority over the code they provide to the contractee even if that means charging more to ensure said code shall be maintained well into beyond original production date; or doing the hard but necessary things like engaging directly with contractee and its staff at ground-zero and not-to-mention the customers said project serves so as to stay dialed into the picture for as long or as intimately as necessary to ensure optimal results.

It is not always a rewarding experience, and can be demoralizing at times because internal staff can often view contractors as outside threats to their own jobs (which is understandable; but actually is part of the value in hiring outside contractors from time to time as it keeps staff on their toes) and so you may often be feeling like you are on the outside knocking on the window just to get basic access to assets, servers, or people/gatekeepers responsible for granting you what you need to get said work done, yet...

if contractor doesn't exert this extent of dilligence, or lazily assumes the company will maintain said code by means of its own devices - it will become lose lose for both sides as the contractor will be blamed when things start to break or when internal staff eventually & inevitably are requested to introduce new features on top of the now outdated 'foreign codebase' they begrudgingly must now maintain - which can conversely result in long drawn-out 'new platform' projects that set back said company by months or a year or more resulting in yet more need for contractors to fill in gaps again and as such this never-ending cycle continues.

At the end of the day if you are contractor you are indeed expendable & temporary and so its best not to get emotionally invested; be results focused & get paid for your time, do your best and at the end of the day that is all you and your client need - at least until the next cycle begins.

Post reply on HN