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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]

#441

Post by ClumsyPilot »

jasonkester wrote: post #373
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 know, man. Young You sounds like a very different person to Young Me. If my first employer had told young 20-something Me "I'm afraid we're not going to let you come in and sit in this felt cube every day after all. Instead we're going to ask that you fly to Thailand and work from a laptop on the beach from here on out.", I would not have reacted by explaining how work is a social thing that needs to happen i…

Many peasants wanted to defent their tyranical king, that sort of thing.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#442

Post by ptr »

paulcole wrote: post #124
ameister14 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most employers aren't actually operating with efficiency as the main goal. Look at it this way: worker A makes 10 widgets an hour. In 8 hours, he makes 80 widets. worker B makes 20 widgets an hour. In 4 hours, he makes 80 widgets. Why should the employer care about which one works more hours?

Because most people aren’t as productive as Worker B. Having Worker B come in late and leave early sets a bad example for all the Worker As (and breeds resentment among them). Worker B staying all day and screwing around half the time and distracting Worker A so they get 8 widgets done an hour instead of 10 is bad, too. Give me 10 average people over 5 great ones any day. Average people can get better when they work…

How about 10 average vs 1 great?

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#443

Post by yarky »

kmonsen wrote: post #278
cco wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Yeah, then why not fire everyone? Reduce salaries to 0, all the work is hard to measure. Or why have we all not been remote for a long time, instead of squeezed into high cost locations? When it comes to their core business companies have a decent belief in what it looks like.

>why have we all not been remote for a long time, instead of squeezed into high cost locations?

Because it seemed impossible, until now.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#444

Post by pelasaco »

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…

I think some people are assuming here that everyone in the university are in the same age and life moment? I went to the university in Germany too and I had some colleagues with kids already and others way over their 30s, that they loved when they could just learn remotely.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#445

Post by e9 »

j4yav wrote: post #379
rorroe53 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

GitLab seems to be doing ok, and they get together in person only once every 8 or 9 months. Or would you consider that hybrid also?

One off examples don't set the trend. For example, holacracy seems to be working out for Valve but that's about it.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#446

Post by ghaff »

knicknic wrote: post #157
cooleddy89 wrote: post #154

Many of these debates about work from home remind me of the arguments about “online banking” or “e-commerce” in the early internet days. One side argues that the interpersonal relationships are critical and can never be replicated fully online. The other points at the convenience factor and claims a higher productivity for all involved. The truth as always is somewhere in the middle. I do most of my banking online, b…

Employees will just slack on another device. A phone or something. I haven’t been in a bank in over 5 years. I have refinanced my home twice, and will probably do so again without stepping inside an office. The only reason I see to have an in person bank is if I wanted a safety deposit box, or frequently needed to get money changed.

For certain types of large transactions, identity verification still sometimes makes it easier to go into an office if doing so is convenient enough.

That said, I had a large transaction I needed to do fairly early in the pandemic. I'd gone into an office to do an earlier iteration on this but I really didn't want to do so in April. I was able to do it over the phone. I remarked to a friend of mine who is regularly involved in such things that "A lot of orgs are discovering they don't actually need to do their traditional processes" and she fully agreed that a lot of people are discovering they don't actually need to do everything they thought they did.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#447

Post by joelbluminator »

randmeerkat wrote: post #262
ascotan wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 is the biggest issue Management and non-management have different subcultures. Managers need power meetings, lunch meetings, shoulder-taps, etc. They are tasked with watching you and making sure everyone is on task. Non-managers don't care about in-person other than for the socializing aspect (or maybe they want to get away from the house). I think that non-management can work effectively remote most of the time (…

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…

I feel the same way, it's very rare they add any value. especially the ones who aren't hands on, that's kind of highly paid secretary.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#448

Post by kethinov »

ck425 wrote: post #437
jasonkester wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, man. Young You sounds like a very different person to Young Me. If my first employer had told young 20-something Me "I'm afraid we're not going to let you come in and sit in this felt cube every day after all. Instead we're going to ask that you fly to Thailand and work from a laptop on the beach from here on out.", I would not have reacted by explaining how work is a social thing that needs to happen i…

The office you describe sounds like a crap office. Comparing a crap office to remote (where it's largely as good or as bad as your decide) isn't really fair. I've previously always worked in lovely offices, with lots of light and quiet spaces, at places where adhoc working from home was common and acceptable (even if we were still office first). Compared to that remote working sucks for me, particularly for the reaso…

I've worked at a half dozen companies and I've never worked in an office that wasn't inferior to my home office. Even when I was poor and my home office was my bedroom shared with my wife, that sure beat the interruption farms of big tech office buildings. Nowadays I have a private room where I can keep it quieter than a library or blast music on speakers that beat any headphones and I've got a nicer monitor setup and chair than any company would've given me too. Of course I like commuting to a shared office space for certain kinds of meetings, but most interactions are fine over chat or video call. Needing to be in person is by far the exceptional day, not the rule. I've been cheering the slow normalization of remote work over the past decade and the way the pandemic tipped it over the edge has been a big silver lining to me.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#449

Post by schnable »

dcolkitt wrote: post #429
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…

> You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent. This seems silly. Why would any company prefer workers with less experience. If anything, I think you’ve got the causation backwards. Hot startups are full of young engineers, because they need to be located in dense metro hubs of talent. These areas heavily skew young, because people with families flee HCoL areas. The competitive advantage of a 25…

I mostly agree with this, but startups also benefit from people willing to take a lower salary in exchange for equity (or maybe just lower salary in general), and willing to work very long hours. That will always favor young people without families.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#450

Post by joelbluminator »

miguelmota wrote: post #269
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…

Agree that socializing in person with colleagues is important for well being, particularly for people that don’t have roommates or a family at home. Depression and struggling with moments of existential crisis can occur as a side effect from total social isolation and mental health can deteriorate. Of course, some people are more adapt to remote than others and a good middle ground could be going to the office when d…

Well people can easily get burned out and depressed by commutes or by petty office politics, which you have more of when everyone is physically in the office. Is there any evidence suggesting remote is a net negative over a net positive?
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