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I hope work from home continues

ryanmercer.com

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Re: I hope work from home continues

#311

Post by annoyingnoob »

I've been in the office the entire time and I have no sympathy. While you all got to go home I got to go to the office, every day. Take all of the complaints and add masks, social distancing, extra cleaning, etc.

Working from home is great for some and not for others. If your office is so terrible then leave, but be sure to tell your employer that you are leaving due to the office conditions.

At some point you'll need to put on your big girl panties and get back to the office, at least some times.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#312

Post by Pokepokalypse »

benrbray wrote: post #175
havelhovel wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the issues you raised could be addressed through simple technological solutions or better management, assuming your company actually wants to embrace remote work. New hires afraid to ask for help? Make it clear that it's part of their job. Developers need to see another developer's screen? Screen share over Zoom. Multiple employees don't know how to use a tool? Provide a one-hour presentation. Rin…

If the senior developers are grumbling about not wanting to be in the same room as their coworkers, I wouldn't be surprised if the junior devs feel nervous about asking for a few minutes of their time. It is the job of senior devs to make new employees feel like part of the team.

Even worse when you're in an isolated zoom meeting with a senior dev, and they're talking trash about other developers on your team. There's constructive criticism, and there's macho posturing by fucking douchebags. Even worse when you mention it to management, and they do nothing.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#313

Post by imposterreality »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #126
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…

What you're seeing is the demographics that are over-represented on different platforms. Working people in their 20s mostly live in cheap apartments whereas a huge chunk of Reddit lives with their parents (if they're employed at all) and HN skews older and wealthier to the point where people have nice houses in nice suburbs or can justify a higher end apartment.

> a huge chunk of Reddit lives with their parents

This seems lost on most people but is painfully clear if you read post histories. For instance, most of /r/childfree (an interesting topic no doubt) is a younger sister overexposed to her parents' excitement (because she's living at home) about older sister's kid. Most of /r/QAnonCasualties is the same sort of angst, directed at parents. Most city subs are the same way, edgy "right wing" guy turns out to live with his dad, who he's parroting. It's incredible that the site is taken any more seriously than 4Chan; there ought to be some great business studies on Reddit's "teflon" nature.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#314

Post by andreilys »

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.

You had more than a year now to get out of your top floor apartment lease.

Not to mention that a pandemic is not an accurate reflection of what real remote work looks like.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#315

Post by Johnny555 »

gorkemyurt wrote: post #229
blunte wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

How do you carry your monitor? this has been a problem for me during covid. also there is the work chair problem..

While it's not a big 4K monitor, when I used to travel a lot pre-COVID, I got a 15" USB monitor for my laptop. It was small enough to easily haul around in a carryon bag and gave some useful screen real estate.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#316

Post by ghaff »

csa wrote: post #287
folkrav wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 100% remote. Some face to face is desirable, sure. Do it in core work hours, and don't assume I want to work outside those.

I think that was the idea. Most 100% remote places I know of that do retreats typically have them during the week. A weekend retreat would be reserved for an activity that would only happen on a weekend and has buy-in from the team. There seems to be a lot of resistance from remote workers about remote worker retreats happening outside of work hours. Is this actually a thing? I have never heard of it other than the w…

People on my broader distributed team accept that periodic multi-day weekday off-sites are part of the deal. Can't really avoid some weeknights traveling. But, then, all of us normally do a lot of business travel anyway. Periodic F2F is important and there's no way to do it just on company time if everyone isn't in the same location. If someone really can't, they can dial in but that's inevitably not a great experience when everyone else is in the same room.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#317

Post by bagacrap »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #134
hiq wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - my commute: I cycled into work, and the daily exercise was great This one is not like the others, it's completely up to you to have a bike ride e.g. at lunch time around the block when you WFH.

Oh, you're right. But when you have to cycle to get to work whether you want to or not, its easier to get that exercise in. I'm not a leisure cyclist. I don't dress up in spandex and ride an expensive bike. In fact, I have difficulty containing my derision for leisure cyclists. I know that the equipment they use has utility, but it also signals: I don't have to ride a bike. I have an expensive SUV at home, and I didn…

Your attitude is really rather appalling and it seems you're even suggesting that you did lose your driver's license to a DUI.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#318

Post by PragmaticPulp »

kibleopard wrote: post #293

A pattern I notice (not necessarily directly related to this article) is that the people who loudly exclaim “I don’t want to go back to the office ever again!” are usually older folks who: > have a house > have a family As a 20-something who lives alone in an apartment, I don’t get the luxury of having a nice backyard to go work in (like someone mentioned doing in another comment thread here). I don’t get the luxury…

Parents with small children at home often prefer the office because it provides some context switching.

It’s really difficult to explain to a toddler why a parent is home but cannot play with them for half of the day.

That said, you’re not alone in preferring to work in an office. It’s actually very common outside of Internet forums for people to prefer working in an office. It’s just not a popular opinion online right now. To each their own, but let’s not pretend like one working style is inherently better than the other for everyone.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#319

Post by bagacrap »

Camas wrote: post #148
hiq wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - my commute: I cycled into work, and the daily exercise was great This one is not like the others, it's completely up to you to have a bike ride e.g. at lunch time around the block when you WFH.

Easier to exercise when there's a purpose to it.

Like your health and longevity?

Re: I hope work from home continues

#320

Post by greedo »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #113
ryanmercer wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Had to address the unclean bathroom comment. My company is a large insurance provider. Billions of dollars under management so money really isn't a big deal. You know how bad our cleaning us?

They have one guy per floor responsible for cleaning four large restrooms, vacuuming, dumping trash cans. The one who does my floor is a lazy idiot. The cleaning company tolerates this because they pay crap wages; they save their best employee for the 4th floor where the VPs and higher work. Everyone else gets a shitty bathroom. Once, a dude had explosive diarrhea in a stall. A year later, there were still shit stains on the wall...

Don't be surprised at how cheap even big successful business can be.

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