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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]

#381

Post by Apfel »

odiroot wrote: post #360
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…

> 4. For a huge swath of Americans at least, work is an escape from the drudgery of the home. This is big. If I had a fancy apartment in a good quality building, I wouldn't mind. But the place I currently reside in, is really frustrating to spend your whole day. I can easily hear my neighbours talking, their pets, screeching children or construction work many floors above. The ceilings are also quite low, which ampli…

Obviously this isn't a permanent solution, but noise cancelling headphones have gotten really good recently. Sony xm1000 models and Bose could potentially go some way towards helping you deal with this.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#382

Post by konjin »

thekyle wrote: post #361
toomanybeersies wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why even bother with expensive devs? Because you get what you pay for. I am yet to hear of any cases where in the long run outsourcing development to a low-wage country actually saved money. Competent engineers generally follow the money and emigrate. Why earn $10k a year in India when you could earn $100k in the USA?

What if $10k in India gets you the same lifestyle as $100k in the U.S.?

It doesn't.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#383

Post by frays »

pantalaimon wrote: post #355
ascar wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

> Not attending class doesn't mean you have no human interaction Well currently that's the case either way > there are tons of other options for human interaction like sport clubs. Yea but you won't meet people there who are into the same field of study as you are. At Uni you get to meet people who have chosen the same path as you have, often people very much alike you. You are working together on tasks, explain the…

A lot of what you have said is opinion-based and subjective.

> Also students usually live in a single room apparent, so it gets really hard to separate study and private live.

I lived in a single room apartment and found it quite easy to separate study and private life. It was just about self-control and not invite your girlfriend up to your apartment when you're trying to study for exams.

> I find it much harder to stay focused on a video lecture than on a live one inside a lecture hall.

Not for me. It was much easier to focus at home without the guy next to you constantly shifting in his seat. Plus able to pause the video and rewatch the parts that you didn't understand the first time.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#384

Post by vishnugupta »

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 don't think lumping together university/college education with professional setup will yield useful results. Everything about them are vastly different. Situations in life, demography, support system, primary goals, to name a few.

Just to pick on one aspect; tools. Remote work tools are geared towards many-to-many collaborative activities. Whereas remote learning is primarily a one-to-many activity. Of course you have supporting TAs but still, it's about a very small set of people dispensing information/learning to a very large group students.

At the campus, the physical presence naturally fosters a whole range of interactions besides classroom learning, as you rightly pointed out. Replicating that is just impossible online.

Professional activities, however, is comparatively easier to replicate online, going by the evidence of how companies were able to go full remote just with a few day's notice. Uber, for instance, went full with just one day's notice. I was expecting a massive productivity drop. To my surprise, my team (I was a manager there) actually began shipping more features during full remote. Sure, it took ~2 weeks for us to find a rhythm but that's to be expected.

All this to say, I completely agree with you w.r.t. online education. It's been a shitshow. Education is so much more than just learning. But please don't extend that argument to the professional life. From what I've seen, remote work is here to stay, at least I hope it does. People in India have been working from their home towns instead of being stuck in expensive and shitty urban jungles. It'll spur the much needed growth of tier-2/3 cities in India.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#385

Post by telesilla »

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…

Our company is 100% remote and we are genuinely truly friends on many levels, we have a core requirement that there is a base level of communication when at work and we have regular all-hands meetings with no agenda, using a platform suited to large gatherings. Pre-covid we met a conferences or when convenient and we have a few location-specifc gatherings when possible (currently on hold of course).

Being together in person doesn't give you the sense of companionship - we found instead that it's the act of building something together does that.

Rather than wishing for the commute, most of my team loves that they are spending more time with their family.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#386

Post by barry-cotter »

joelbluminator wrote: post #349
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…

> 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.

Majority voting isn’t how anything works except democracy and civil war. The market will do its best to satisfy everyone at the same time, just as some office jobs have cast iron punctuality requirements and others are a great deal more flexible. Some people will trade money for flexibility, some jobs are unwilling to be flexible. The market clears in the end.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#387

Post by ameister14 »

canofbars wrote: post #236
ameister14 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think remote work will be an option for jobs where it's less about time in the chair and more about what tasks are accomplished. That should honestly be most jobs, and almost all white collar jobs. Time theft is an interesting concept to me because it implies you're being paid for the time rather than for the utility of your labor. Why do you think time theft is important in your job? >But even some of my direct re…

>Time theft is an interesting concept to me because it implies you're being paid for the time rather than for the utility of your labor. Why do you think time theft is important in your job? It kind of goes both ways though, if you had a less productive day would you be expected to stay late to make up for it? Most of the time you would just leave at the normal time and it wouldn't matter too much as long as you look…

>if you had a less productive day would you be expected to stay late to make up for it?

Not necessarily, no. If your KPI's and bonus are properly lined up, that could be something for your manager to keep an eye on but you can't expect every day to be peak productivity.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#388

Post by ameister14 »

anonytrary wrote: post #310
Aeolun wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent. A lot of the things you say make sense, but this sounds ridiculous to me. Why would you only want young talent? How about older talent? Skill isn’t age specific.

I think we are misunderstanding. I never implied you don't need both. I just implied that you will most likely not have the latter. You need both, obviously.

Why is it obvious that you need both? Plenty of companies seem to be ageist and surviving well

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#389

Post by ameister14 »

icedchocolate wrote: post #376
nilkn wrote: post #312

Earlier 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…

The commenter wasn’t talking about all people having to work at the office all of the time, merely that fully remote was not good and not favoured by young engineers. And he was spot on. I’m a young engineer in my 20s and if I don’t get in-person training soon (I started over a year ago and haven’t gotten any since we’ve been remote the entire time), I’m going to quit and go elsewhere. This is in spite of working in…

The way you put it, it sounds like you're working with the best possible team you can - why would you be sacrificing your career to stay?

Wouldn't it be the other way around? Sacrificing your career for social contact?

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#390

Post by wongarsu »

ascar wrote: post #330
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 l…

In German university I did choose which lectures were worth attending in person (generally those where the professor was more insightful or entertaining than his slides or book alone), but generally attending the lectures wasn't the point. The lectures are the excuse to get people in the same building, get them to occasionally sit close to each other, give them topics to talk about and incentive to do so (when you've spent three hours on your weekly exercise that you have to turn in tomorrow and need help). It's also so much easier socializing if everyone has a valid excuse to drive there anyways; you might as well stay a bit longer avid talk
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