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Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

nbloom.people.stanford.edu

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Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#311

Post by mech422 »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #288
mech422 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Very few companies have on-site gyms, snacks and child care. I'm not seeing your point here? it IS still a sellers market, and companies do pay for those things. So its still a savings for them. As for a 'drop in the bucket', I've seen companies try to save money by buying cheaper pens. So I'm sure cheaper rents, utilities, perks, etc. will be considered... edit: grammar

Generally companies are replacing office perks with WFH perks, like furniture stipends or paying for employee's individual gym memberships.

Lets stipulate perks cost the same either way, since you don't think companies will come out ahead on perks..

They still save on janitorial, security, utilities, rent, etc.

So I fail to see how companies don't save money. And from what I've seen, companies will consider anything that saves them money...

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#312

Post by nilkn »

anonytrary wrote: post #292

This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…

> if your company is purely remote

Pure remote companies are likely to be rare. But we may see a proliferation of hybrid companies that maintain office spaces but allow certain roles to work remotely most of the time.

I think your analysis here is one-sided and is ignoring all the major problems with 100%-work-in-office cultures. Housing costs are absolutely out of control in major urban centers, and newcomers are sacrificed at the altar of NIMBYism in order to make existing homeowners/landowners wealthier. People are wasting away commuting hours a day. Folks have been getting crammed into denser and denser open floorplans and bullpens for years.

People are willing to put up with these things when they don't have any other options. But when other companies are investing in supporting hybrid environments and you're stuck still requiring people to relocate to San Francisco permanently, you're going to start losing talent. Not supporting some kind of hybrid remote policy is going to become a serious competitive disadvantage in the talent market. You can still maintain your trendy urban office space to attract the college graduates who want that lifestyle.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#313

Post by toomanybeersies »

DC1350 wrote: post #43

WFH makes the new grad experience miserable if you go to college somewhere far from where you grew up. I’m graduating soon and the only place I have geographic ties to is my home town where I tried very hard to get away from forever. Everyone I know from college is scattering all over the continent. Does anyone have tips for choosing where to live as a remote worker, or how to make friends as a young person in a new…

> how to make friends as a young person in a new city without an office?

I emigrated from my home country around 4 years ago, and none of my friends are people I've worked with. I'm not against it, but at my old job my coworkers were mostly 10+ years older, married and had children, so they had their own thing going on.

There's lots of ways to make new friends outside of work, depending on what floats your boat. You can go to industry meetups, join a sports club, take up a hobby, go to live music gigs etc. But to be honest, making friends is just one of those things that happens organically, from random encounters multiplied by time. After university, it takes a bit longer to make friends, since people generally have a well established social circle and spend less time socialising due to work and other responsibilities. It took me a year or two to find my feet and "build a network" of friends.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#314

Post by anonytrary »

nilkn wrote: post #312
anonytrary wrote: post #292

This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…

> if your company is purely remote Pure remote companies are likely to be rare. But we may see a proliferation of hybrid companies that maintain office spaces but allow certain roles to work remotely most of the time. I think your analysis here is one-sided and is ignoring all the major problems with 100%-work-in-office cultures. Housing costs are absolutely out of control in major urban centers, and newcomers are sa…

I think you may be misinterpreting me. I am not advocating for pure in-person, I am only advocating against pure remote. I believe a hybrid approach is best.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#315

Post by rapsey »

cco wrote: post #256
rapsey wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Where is that? My only other living experience outside of America has been Europe, and Europe seemed to start later and stay later compared with America(sans SF, SF is a special place where everyone goes to bed early and wakes up late).

Also Europe but as the sibling comment said, this kind of thing is very region specific. Over here school starting at 7am is pretty normal. Probably more so than 8am and no one starts at 9am. Lots of jobs also start 7am. So people get up earlier. Even for jobs that are not as time sensitive as IT, people being at work at 7am or earlier is completely normal, especially if they have kids.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#316

Post by blackrock »

randmeerkat wrote: post #265
blackrock wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with #1. Companies do not want you socializing at work. Sure, they tolerate the occasional chitchat, but only on a superficial level. If you actually want to socialize with your coworkers, then you must do that outside in the smoke area, or during your lunch outings. But never actually in the office. That is the taboo. And the moment you break it, then that’s when you’ll get a demerit from your management.

Remind me not to work at your company, sounds depressing. Most of the good work ideas I’ve seen come up, come up as a result of socialising at work.

The best way is to start your own company. That way you can define your own rules.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#317

Post by Aeolun »

zabzonk wrote: post #76
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…

> The commuting routine, even if it's a nightmare, offers a sense of normalcy that most people have gotten used to and in a weird way rely on for grounding. You have obviously never been on the Tube at rush-hour in London. All it offers is a sense of stress and anger.

I can only speak for myself, but I miss my sense of stress and anger.

Any time I go to the office I hate it because I’m extra stressed out about sick people being on the train, but I cannot deny it gives a sense of normalcy to life that is otherwise entirely missing.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#318

Post by noir_lord »

nilkn wrote: post #312
anonytrary wrote: post #292

This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…

> if your company is purely remote Pure remote companies are likely to be rare. But we may see a proliferation of hybrid companies that maintain office spaces but allow certain roles to work remotely most of the time. I think your analysis here is one-sided and is ignoring all the major problems with 100%-work-in-office cultures. Housing costs are absolutely out of control in major urban centers, and newcomers are sa…

> Pure remote companies are likely to be rare

They are, I work for one - it imposes challenges but in aggregate it is a vastly preferable way to work for me.

Interestingly the people who do well 100% remote are quite different to the people who well 100% in office.

Fundamentally the people who communicate the most effectively in written text and can concisely convey their thoughts/opinions do well.

I love it but I can completely understand why some people wouldn't.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#319

Post by rmk »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #274
rmk wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this paper, and survey, in general, appears to be ignoring one very important set of people: job hoppers and new entrants to the job market (to be fair, I did not read thru the entire paper, just looked over interesting sections). These two categories of people will almost certainly not prefer working from home: for job hoppers, it is difficult or in some cases, impossible to on-board; for new entrants, they…

I see this a lot "onboarding is difficult remotely", but I don't know why. It hasn't been difficult at my last few jobs including the current one where many/most of us have been remote for years. You get added to the email lists, the slack channels, the documentation wiki, and the issue tracker. Daily meetings at 10am. You pair up with one person for a couple weeks and then somebody else and so on for the first few m…

As an example, being able to talk to the people who handle the coding, commit, build, and deployment, all in one place, is quite valuable and saves time. In many large and established companies, there is formal training that puts all these people in one room with the trainees, either because the company is already so distributed as to make this impossible otherwise, or because it's more cost-efficient to disseminate this info to a large number of incoming engineers.

In smaller startups and growing companies, where these things are changing at a high rate, it becomes even more valuable.

It's not that these things are not doable virtually, but it's something that will require deliberate rearranging of how people work. In larger companies, this type of stuff already happens, but not so much in smaller ones.

Engineering organizations can learn a lot from Sales departments in this area. Sales in companies that sell in various geographies (which includes even small companies that have gained traction and are beginning to grow) already functions perfectly fine with very distributed teams, and highly technical sales motions (think enterprise products).

Small, growing companies have big problems with communications and coordination in general. That's what makes the scaling stage challenging and full of pitfalls: many companies fail at this stage!

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#320

Post by johndoe42377 »

Remote, like almost everything else, is just not for everyone.

For some people, which are usually called "introverts" and similar names, remote is a bliss, and for people like Torvalds, it worked well for decades.

The only real problem is for mostly useless management positions, who will have difficulty to justify their necessity without in-person social signalling bullshit.

For really capable people a simple and straightforward text-based workflow is all what is required.

Again, the development of Linux kernel would be the use case.

My bet is that the actual developers of the Pfizer vaccine do not need any bullshit meetings either.

One more time - for some of us not facing idiots in person is a bliss, and we are capable of writing communication at the level way beyond what is required for most jobs or business relations.

And it is not Slack and other synchronous bullshit. Async email and tickets will do.

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