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I hope work from home continues

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Re: I hope work from home continues

#181

Post by blunte »

HWR_14 wrote: post #140
blunte wrote: post #64

Wow, the author has a pretty miserable company :(. That said, I share most of the opinions even though I quite like the office environment of my company. I abso-fking-love choosing where I work (and to some degree, when). Being able to take my laptop and go sit under a canopy in my back yard when the weather is nice, seeing my rabbits hopping around the yard, my cats avoiding the aggressive she-rabbit, hearing the bi…

I'm thrown by people working on a laptop. Do you have a battery powered second screen? Is there some workflow tips I should adopt to make it work better? I'm quite jealous of people who can work on laptops. I wonder the degree to which people enjoy WFH is the same as the degree to which they enjoy working on a laptop. Even the people I know with a dedicated room for work set up want to go back to the office if they p…

I much prefer a 4k monitor as my primary, and my laptop below it (open, as a small second screen).

Going outside, working just off the laptop, is a definite shift. It usually means less coding, but sometimes it pushes me to be productive in areas I normally neglect (documenting, planning, organizing).

To do real development, I am very dependent upon a big monitor. If I travel, I take one or rent one.

Honestly though, sometimes I just go for a walk. And often during that walk, with no screens, my brain magically sorts through some problems and gives me new insights.

If you work from home though, most people agree on dedicating some space and properly equipping it. Working always only on a laptop in a floater kind of way is something that I suspect most people cannot do with any real level of productivity.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#182

Post by trentnix »

protonimitate wrote: post #143
blunte wrote: post #64

Wow, the author has a pretty miserable company :(. That said, I share most of the opinions even though I quite like the office environment of my company. I abso-fking-love choosing where I work (and to some degree, when). Being able to take my laptop and go sit under a canopy in my back yard when the weather is nice, seeing my rabbits hopping around the yard, my cats avoiding the aggressive she-rabbit, hearing the bi…

I have a hard time wrapping my head around why companies are mandating 100% return to office. Cost issues aside, I've always maintained that the absolute best experience is a hybrid/flexible schedule and location policy. I'm currently full time remote (I'm on the East Coast working for a West Coast company). My previous company had its main office in my current city, but allowed a super flexible choose-where-you-work…

I have a hard time wrapping my head around why companies are mandating 100% return to office.

I doubt it lasts, at least in software. Talented people are going to have lots of remote options making it harder to find good people willing to show up for daily cubicle warfare.

I was someone who preferred to be in the office every day prior to the pandemic. But after adjusting, I really, really like working from home. Truth is, I can't imagine I'll ever take another job that expects me to show up to an actual office everyday. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#184

Post by [deleted] »

jjice wrote: post #97

Something I've noticed without formal study is that people my age (college seniors and recent grads) don't like working from home. I was working at a new internship (8 months, starting January 2020) and the initial working from home was draining, unmotivating, and a bit depressing (that's partially due to being alone during the start of the pandemic). I thought I was in the minority because all of HN and Reddit seeme…

[deleted]

Re: I hope work from home continues

#185

Post by PragmaticPulp »

blunte wrote: post #170
folkrav wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And for the social aspect, weekend or week-long dev retreats are ideal. As much as I appreciate (most of) my coworkers, on nights and weekends I want to close my computer and spend quality time with my family, not see and talk to the same people I am already forced to talk to 35-40h a week. They might be ideal to you, but you're assuming quite a lot about everyone's situations if you think they work for everyone.

In my remote experience, I definitely don't talk to my colleagues that much. But when you're trying to build a small company, one approach is to make it feel like a family. And families always have people we like and people we like not so much. But there's something special about one unit working toward a single goal. My design is for a startup with young people. This would not work nearly as well for older people an…

I managed distributed teams long before COVID. Having people meet in person a few times a year does wonders for team cohesion.

Some people handle remote communications just fine. Others were raised on a steady diet of internet flame wars and approach the screen names in their company chat the same way: As enemies to argue with every day.

Putting people in front of each other associates a real person with that screen name. Everyone starts treating each other better and working more cooperatively. The transformation is almost instant.

One important tip: Face to face meetings need to happen on regular company time as much as possible. Avoid anything on weekends or after hours as much as possible. You don’t want the team building to be an extra ask on top of their normal workload. It is their workload. Obviously flights and hotel stays must be an exception, but keep it in bounds of normal working hours as much as possible.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#186

Post by ascotan »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #45

Things I miss: - interacting with my colleagues, going out to lunch - the very high-speed and reliability of being on the network wire - dedicated work-space outside of my home where home-chores don't press on my mind while I'm trying to work - my commute: I cycled into work, and the daily exercise was great - a clearer separation of work and home life Things I don't miss: - interacting with my colleagues, when i don…

For everyone that complains about interacting with colleagues. I feel that this can be addressed by having managers do periodic offsite meet-ups.

However there are those people that comes to the office to talk all day, and honestly, for everyone else's productivity, it's better they work from home.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#187

Post by JumpCrisscross »

parzivalm wrote: post #171
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…

I agree that this seems to be an issue for new hires that I've seen. But I think the blame for this lies in management and the seniors on the team. If a fresh out of college grad feels hesitant to ping a coworker then that coworker is doing something wrong. I'm seeing a lot of companies and teams seem to shift this blame to the WFH situation, where really it is a failure of the team to not integrate and work well tog…

> the blame for this lies in management and the seniors on the team

It absolutely does. Point is a lot of industries never formalized training, instead relying on osmosis across teams. That creates a--hopefully temporary--disadvantage for new hires. Again, in some fields.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#188

Post by shados »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #13
nomy99 wrote: post #4

Amazon is bringing back their office employees as the default operating mode; citing inefficiencies in the creative process. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/amazon-expects-some-employee...

Is Amazon really a model company? With all of the horror stories about their warehouses I have to imagine the offices aren't great either. Like I would expect them to be as miserable as Amazon leadership thinks it can get away with.

A lot of the big companies (Amazon, Google, etc) are pretty poor model for...almost everything.

While they may have been great at some point, they're largely carried by a few segments of their businesses and can no longer really fail. Google is mostly carried by their success in ads, and most of the non-ads things they pump out + the way they do it, is mediocre at best, extremely inefficient at worse. Their technological innovations are mostly meant to support these inefficiencies. Sure some stuff they do is cool, but they do a LOT of stuff. Most isn't. The same applies to all these other companies.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#189

Post by ok_coo »

benbristow wrote: post #11
mikece wrote: post #6

While the cross-pollination of ideas from different teams and departments is lost, along with interesting and serendipitous discussions, I'm also in the boat of hoping I never have to go back to an office. Not having a commute, being able to spend more time with my kids, not eating less-healthy fast-food rather than home-cooked meals, being able to spend my (lunch) breaks working in my garden... I never want to go ba…

Lucky you. I live in a top-floor apartment so don't have the luxury of a garden and I'm isolated by myself as I live alone. It's not the same for everyone.

We were in this situation and have been lucky enough to move back in with family, in a more rural location.

I've loved it so far, being able to be around family more and take care of them and just be around.

If full-time remote becomes more the norm, I hope people are able to take the opportunity to be closer to family and friends.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#190

Post by benrbray »

yardie wrote: post #88
benrbray wrote: post #33

Those of you who think that remote-work-by-default would be a good thing, can I ask how your companies are handling career progression and collaboration, as well as mentorship of junior developers? Listen to Adam Savage [1] talk about his early career as a prop-maker. I just don't see how that sort of deep collaboration is possible remotely. As a recent graduate whose first full-time job has been full remote due to t…

It's killing me slowly right now. I got hired in the middle of the pandemic and I think just 6 people even know I exist. I've spent more time talking with HR than my team members. Not for what you think, I respond to their emails and chats so we get along great. My team is mostly on DnD, no idea what their working on and emails take 24-48 hours to respond.

I feel you, it's been really tough on me too, for many of the same reasons. I don't feel like part of the team, and it's not really clear what my purpose is. When this is all over maybe I'll take a break from this lonely career and spend some time in a more human-facing role like teaching.
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