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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]

#321

Post by tekkk »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #190
calvinmorrison wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> For something you're going to spend your life doing, it's a horrible prospect to not expect to make friends at work. Yeah well, as they say, life's a bitch and then you die. On the scale of things that are horrible prospects "not making friends at work" strikes me as something very privileged to be concerned about.

Jesus that's dark. Everybody needs community, there's nothing privileged about that. Through the ages we have bound ourselves to our profession and the people we work with and for in our community. Is that some far-fetched ideal to strive for?

And I'm not meaning some buddy-buddy friends, but at least making good acquaintances. You can't really go much farther than that unless you have developed a good personal rapport and share some set of similarities.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#322

Post by jo23562 »

Everyone seems to forget the most important factor in this whole debate: we aren't in a "mass social experiment in working from home", we're in a "mass social experiment in working in isolation during a pandemic". They're very much not the same thing, for a whole host of reasons.

Just a few examples of how they differ:

* higher stress from living through a pandemic (and everything around it) gives us reason to set ourselves up to reduce stress in ways that normally might be unnecessary.

* having no alternative to working from home makes it easier to ignore the downsides, because it's not a downside when there's no alternative without it

* childcare / care responsibilities means many of our home lives are totally different right now from normal, so not even comparable to normal

* consistent working from home by everyone (on a given team) tends to be more inclusive because ignoring remote people means ignoring everyone so we work hard not to do it. It's much easier to accidentally get lazy about ensuring inclusivity when at least some people are in the office (and I've seen this first-hand pre-COVID, never maliciously).

* no alternative for many employers means they accept any (if any) productivity losses of work from home because it is that or else lose all productivity (which is obviously worse for business)

To be clear, I'm not arguing remote work will/won't stick in the future. I'm just arguing that nearly all of this debate is moot right now, because most people are basing it on an "experiment" with far too many variables different from the reality of remote work during a normal world.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#323

Post by hahaxdxd123 »

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…

Yep, there's no way any young person will want to stick in the Menlo Parks or Palo Altos of the world when there are companies with similar pay that will let them live wherever they want - whether that be dense urban cores, or small towns near national parks.

Frankly, I can't think of a single reason you would want to live in the South Bay. Even if you liked the lifestyle, you could find it in a sunnier suburb near Santa Barbara for a quarter of the price.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#324

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#325

Post by riffraff »

house9-2 wrote: post #259
amw-zero wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Working remotely does not stop collaboration. I have been working primarily remote for the past 12 years. I meet with my team every day for standup and am in constant contact with team members throughout the day, sometimes pair programming or helping to debug issues. This is not much different than working in a colocated situation, except my coworkers don't have to smell my B.O. The tooling available these days makes…

As another person remote for 12 years exactly, I agree that nowadays we have nice tools, but some things are still better in person.

For example, walking to a whiteboard and sketching something is easier than doing the same in zoom, unless everyone in the team owns a wacom tablet, and even then, physical "big visible charts" generally work better than online ones.

I think the trade off is in favour of remote, for me, but it is highly dependent on job, person, team.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#326

Post by DoingIsLearning »

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…

> I've been 100% remote and run remote teams since 2014... To truly work from home 100% of the time you have to be a master at controlling yourself and your ability to be distracted.

You have obviously gathered a lot of remote experience. As someone who has always worked in some form of research lab and is now working from home, I am still achieving my objectives and deliverables but definitely feel a lot less productive without the 'positive' pressure of being with my peers. I am also fortunate that I work with very hands-off and mature managers even in this remote scenario.

What strategies can we create for better self-accountability and discipline when working on long running projects on our own? What worked for you?

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#327

Post by peheje »

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…

> But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.

Make expectations on response times clear. I'm guessing you want it to depend on the medium used and not depend on your (appeared?) online status. Talk with your team about it. Bonus points for summary e-mail after talk.

You usually got a reponse in minutes (I assume IM or mail), lucky.

That is changing: you think it's because they slack. Maybe they much more often enter flow-state* while WFH which is so easely interrupted (or rarely gained) at the office. I know I do.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#328

Post by lrossi »

j4yav wrote: post #220
lrossi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Oh, the horror! > people are shifting work hours to ones more of convenience (again anecdotal) They have no shame! > But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.I have to now prob…

Hey, I'm working on an app meant to help with this (well, it won't fix the instincts of bad managers, but it does provide an "at your convenience" place for topics that might have otherwise been a meeting or a shoulder tap. I'd be curious what you think about it. If you're up to share your thoughts there's a link and my email in my profile.

This is laudable, since I think recent apps like slack or teams are partially responsible for the increase in disruption.

Older ways of messaging, like IRC, were not focused so much on notifications and having a full message history that you had to go through when signing in. This forced people to use specialized forms of communication (video meetings, emails, wikis) for important information. Chat was used for casual stuff, for which it works well.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#329

Post by cblconfederate »

sinsterizme wrote: post #163
chrisseaton wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don't need to live in London anymore, due to work from home? So that's not a problem.

So instead of agreeing that there are extra costs to the employees working from home, you argue that they should move to a cheaper city in order to afford a home office. That's definitely... an option. But consider that this is a tradeoff, given that people choose to live in big cities for other reasons than being close to work

Work was the reason most people moved to london in the first place

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#330

Post by ascar »

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…

I went to a German university and fortunately most universities here still believe that their job is to enable learning and that university is as much about learning to learn and learning to live than it is about the content. In contrast to school this means the motivation has to come from the students and there is no mandatory attendance.

I for one was glad that I didn't have to sit in lectures that I can learn in less than half the time on my own. That I could structure my learning the way it best fits me. This however requires that materials are available in sufficient quality remotely.

Not attending class doesn't mean you have no human interaction, there are tons of other options for human interaction like sport clubs.

Your comment reads like attending in person is the only right way, while I think accepting individualism and providing choice is much better. So if after covid there is the option to work/study in person or from home, whatever fits the individual that day, that would be awesome.

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