People here are tending towards a hybrid model.
I don't think the hybrid model is optimum, Companies who take decisive steps towards remotely-only or office-only defaults will be better off, as the tools and culture will will adapt better.
Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
341–350 of 570 posts
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
I agree, hybrid is definitely the best for most companies. Some in-person collaboration and socializing is always going to beneficial, even if rest of the work is done remotely. Having a long commute isn't that bad either if you only do it once or twice a week, so it gives people much more freedom over where they can live.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#343Earlier 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?
> As a child did you spend 12 years not making friends in school,
Indeed
I never even had a single conversation in school
>since school is for learning and not socialization?
I did not even learn there anything. I learned basically everything at home from books.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is this better for the company? Yes. Key positives for a company are reduced cost of office space and ability to draw upon a wider, cheaper pool of potential workers and increased employee satisfaction (for some, not everyone prefers working from home). Key negatives are reduced productivity due to lack of supervision, difficulty of face-to-face meetings with clients, difficulty of training younger staff. Its a tra…
>Key positives for a company are reduced cost of office space and ability to draw upon a wider, cheaper pool of potential workers...[real dollar values] >Key negatives are reduced productivity due to lack of supervision, difficulty of face-to-face meetings with clients, difficulty of training younger staff.[hard to measure] Just throwing this experience of mine out there, when faced with actual dollar figures and har…
Good management will look further than the balance sheets. If the numbers look good, but the company culture is fading away due to employees only interacting with each other through a computer screen, they should be able to recognize that and take appropriate measures. (because in the end that will most likely also impact the business).
Depending on how your company works, the short term positives could be nothing compared to the problems that will arise when everybody becomes an anonymous cog in an invisible machine.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the big problem here is that most managers add zero value and if anything negatively impact velocity. Really all that’s needed is a project manager with a light touch to help the team know what features are needed by leadership. Then the team can use their freedom of direction to prioritise features along with existing technical work to optimise the technologies being leveraged to better position the business…
This is a ludicrous take. Read a book like high output management and learn what managers actually do and you might realize what value they should be providing.
But sadly accurate if you've never worked with a good manager. Good managers are rare, and people who have never worked with one err on the side of assuming all managers are pointless wastes of space.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is this better for the company? Yes. Key positives for a company are reduced cost of office space and ability to draw upon a wider, cheaper pool of potential workers and increased employee satisfaction (for some, not everyone prefers working from home). Key negatives are reduced productivity due to lack of supervision, difficulty of face-to-face meetings with clients, difficulty of training younger staff. Its a tra…
Another big negative is the sunk cost fallacy of acquiring and/or owning office space. If you have all this space, you need to fill it with people. Ritualistic behavior isn't only exhibited by rank and file employees.
The sunk cost is meaningful for a company randomly choosing to switch to work-from-home. However, currently Covid restrictions in various countries have pushed companies to work from home long enough that the leases are running out and they can reduce (or already have reduced) office space without losing any sunk cost.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#347I'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 disagree with all the points, except (1). If one has a hard time creating a social life outside of work, working remotely is terrible.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#348Earlier 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…
> Shouldn't firms just sack everyone, then hire contractors? I mean, a lot of them are trying to do exactly that.
A lot of bad companies that don't understand the value of developing long term assets. :D
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#349I'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…
> 4. For a huge swath of Americans at least, work is an escape from the drudgery of the home.
Well for a huge swath the office and commuting is a nightmare. If this question is gonna run on majority vote I'm not sure at all the office will make a comeback.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn’t necessarily talking about my team. In fact mine has remained productive. But it has taken more effort on my part to keep them organized and on task. I’m the opposite of a micromanager, I hate that stuff. But the fact is I’m having to probe more and more as time goes on to keep things moving. Heck it not cuts into my productivity which also cuts into my teams. Heck Just last week I had an admin that it took 4…
If I hire someone on a salary and expect him to do X, and he meets that expectation, I wouldn’t care if he did it in 40 hours or if he did it in 10 hours and spent the remaining 30 hours fishing. I hired him to do X and he did. Why should I care how many hours he’s staring at a screen? Now if he’s on an hourly contract, I’d expect the hours to be accurate. For some jobs the expectation is literally “be reachable and…
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