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I hope work from home continues

ryanmercer.com

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Re: I hope work from home continues

#111

Post by mrweasel »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #12

What kind of office was this person working in? Having to breathe jet exhaust fumes while suffering through 85 degree indoor temperatures and drinking algae-filled water is nowhere near normal. The company he’s describing is severely broken if everything he’s describing is true. Most of what he describes are not normal office problems. Some of them are even health and safety violations. Working from home will only di…

Yeah, I understand the benefits of not having to commute, the peace and quite you get when working from home, but the complaint here is that the employer suck.

In this case, and depending on the country, working at this office is illegal. The assumption that working from home is better is a little naive. It’s a result of a terribly company, who will manage to make working from home equally terrible in the long run.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#112

Post by hiq »

Could there be an alternative model where companies give up (often illusory) secrecy for most things, and have employees working in shared spaces near their accommodations, with employees of other companies?

I think that's already the case for a lot of startup accelerators because it helps spread and nurture ideas. You trade internal knowledge transmission for transfers with other companies, most likely not competitors anyway.

Covid WFH completely gives up on offices, but post-Covid does not have to be that extreme.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#113

Post by PragmaticPulp »

ryanmercer wrote: post #74
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #12

What kind of office was this person working in? Having to breathe jet exhaust fumes while suffering through 85 degree indoor temperatures and drinking algae-filled water is nowhere near normal. The company he’s describing is severely broken if everything he’s describing is true. Most of what he describes are not normal office problems. Some of them are even health and safety violations. Working from home will only di…

>What kind of office was this person working in? An office on the property of an international airport. Our maintenance hanger happens to be behind our parking lot and immediately on the other side of it is an active runway. If you work at an airport, not in the terminals, you get used to smelling aviation fuel/jet exhaust. As far as the indoor temperatures, it's a leased building and the HVAC is just inadequate (my…

> Many on HN are accustomed to nice offices with a bunch of perks or remote work, but for a lot of us we work in conditions like this (or far worse) and it's just life.

I don’t know where you live, but I can assure you that what you’re describing is not “just life” in most developed countries. You’re not describing a normal office.

Offices like you describe continue to exist because employees put up with it. The tech job market is very hot right now. I would strongly encourage you to explore your options. What you’re describing is not normal or acceptable.

You don’t need to move to a Google type company with unlimited office budgets. Most companies are smart enough to know they need to address things like broken HVAC or not enough microwaves or unclean bathrooms by spending the relatively tiny amount of money to address the problem. It’s literally cheaper to address these issues than to lose good talent over such easily addressable frustrations.

When you move to a company that treats employees decently, you’ll find that you also get along with coworkers better because everyone is not already miserable and dreading their jobs.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#114

Post by DebtDeflation »

Sadly, RTO is going to happen much quicker than people think. My guess is almost everyone will be in the office 2-3 days per week by July 1 and full time (or whatever arrangement they had pre-pandemic)right after Labor Day. I hope I'm wrong, because I love WFH.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#116

Post by ryanmercer »

refulgentis wrote: post #90
ryanmercer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I believe they're describing a call center Nope, definitely not a call center. In fact only team leads and higher have phones. > someone on HN needs to hire this guy, I wish. GED + 15 years doing a job that doesn't translate to much of anything else doesn't help one's jobs prospects sadly.

Hate to inquire directly to your situation while you've been careful to avoid specifics about role, but: are you a programmer/coder/software engineer/whatever they call hackers these days? :)

Sadly no, my LinkedIn is in the footer of the .com for anyone really curious though.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#117

Post by hn8788 »

Ocerge wrote: post #80
dleslie wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. The company I work at has always been remote-only, and I've been at it for over 5 years. We pair new hires, regardless of ability, with a mentor. They have access to a full checklist of on-boarding tasks and an actively maintained Basecamp. Perhaps the key point is that we do not have "hidden" discussions. Even the voice discussions have notes taken and recorded, and planning sessions are done via a recorded Mi…

Any time I read "flat hierarchy" in a job posting I feel the urge to run. That may be true contractually, but there is _always_ a hierarchy.

Same here. I've worked at a few companies like that, and it's always a ton of office politics with senior employees never being held accountable because they're not technically in charge. It's a prime example of "some are more equal than others".

Re: I hope work from home continues

#119

Post by jjice »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #51

Covid WFH is a real issue for our new developers. Especially the ones who are fresh out of college. They're missing out on so much institutional knowledge transfer. Especially the kind of monkey-see-monkey-do experience you need to build confidence using tools such as git. They're also hesitant to ping coworkers and ask for screen sharing time because they can't sense if the more senior developers are working on some…

For sure. The job I had during March 2020 was difficult because my boss came off as unwelcoming to questions at points (even in the office I could see him open my slack messages and ignore them), which made working much more difficult when you're adapting to new systems. Thankfully, I had some great coworkers who were very welcoming and helped me a lot. If there is anything I learned from that, it's that being welcoming and open to questions from a coworker is extremely important. Sometimes it's easy to get frustrated with a coworker, but being able help them kindly is such a huge skill I will continue to appreciate and reciprocate.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#120

Post by dudul »

itg wrote: post #29

This comes down to individual preferences, but does anyone prefer going to the office? Here's my list of reasons why: - Better relationships with co-workers. I enjoyed smalltalk, getting coffee, lunch, or drinks afterwards with them. It was also easier to interact with others outside your immediate team. - Separation of a work environment and home environment. - If I had a question, it is more likely and quicker to g…

> it is more likely and quicker to get answered in person instead of over slack/email/zoom.

It was more likely quicker because you felt like you could just walk to the person's desk and interrupt whatever they were doing to demand that they solve your problem.

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