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I hope work from home continues

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Re: I hope work from home continues

#401

Post by npsimons »

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…

> They're missing out on so much institutional knowledge transfer.

What this sounds like to me is your organization isn't documenting things properly. I know, because I've run into this exact same problem on projects at my organization.

"Send me your coding standard."

"Uh, we don't have one."

"Okay, well what's your code review process for integrating changes?"

"It's not written down, I'll have to walk you through it."

"What's my tasking?"

"I'll need to sit down with you in person to discuss that."

The lack of communication skills in software people has never been more obvious than during the quarantines. It's a serious deficit that needs to be addressed. I mean, what happens when one of these people leave, either for greener pastures, something happens to them, or they just simply retire?

Re: I hope work from home continues

#402

Post by didibus »

I'm a bit conflicted, because I see pros/cons both ways, but I think I'm ready to go back to the office.

My main reason is because I've felt that I end up working more when I work from home, because most people take the time saved in the commute and put it towards work. And ramping up people on the team, mentoring, coordinating with others for project ideas, planning, goals, progress, and all form of collaboration is more tedious and less efficient.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#403

Post by schwartzworld »

The article mentions the cost of commuting that is now saved by working from home, but fails to mention the new added cost of maintaining a workspace in your home. Prior to covid I would work from the couch on WFH days, but that's not sustainable for full time work. Now my wife and I have to have two permanent setups, and it's a challenge to make it all work.

If my industry goes mandatory WFH forever, I'll probably eventually have to think about a new industry.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#404

Post by jonnycomputer »

atty wrote: post #206
jonnycomputer wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If anything, I would think “i didn’t lose my license to a DUI but I like to get some cardio” is a good thing, and any derision should be aimed at people who actually did endanger themselves and others by driving under the influence. I am very confused by your attitude.

The information it signals is fine. I like people without DUIs who are getting cardio too. What I don't like is the signalling. I come from a poor neighborhood. The signalling is tightly wrapped up in class attitudes. Frankly, its also something that poor people can't afford to participate in. And I believe it also gets in the way of greater acceptance of bicycling as commuting.

I remember several years ago, my work place had a "bike to work day". The gear and getups on display looked like a parade of peacocks, and certainly had very little to do in spirit with biking to work.

Perhaps it also irks me that these leisure cyclists will say crap about my cheap bike ... as I pass them on the road.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#405

Post by hallarempt »

splatcollision wrote: post #215
JackFr wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a hard time wrapping my head around why companies are mandating 100% return to office Informal communication, informal collaboration, a culture of apprenticeship. To the extent that the organization values these they are all served much better in person than remote. All companies and all people are different. There isn't a one size fits all. But it's not like there are no benefits to in person.

> Informal communication, informal collaboration, a culture of apprenticeship You're right of course, those qualities don't naturally occur remotely. However, and I know I'm slightly taking your use of "culture" out of context, but "Culture" is often code for any number of implicit biases in a workplace. Known or unknown. If you don't fit in, for whatever reason, can you still not be a productive asset in the corpora…

"You're right of course, those qualities don't naturally occur remotely."

In my experience, they do... It's how a project like Krita has grown naturally for over twenty years, bringing in new people, teaching them, having them become productive.

Of course, meeting in person, once or twice a year is important. But there's no need for offices for us.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#406

Post by bcanzanella »

I'm seven years into working remotely (from home) this week. While I don't miss some of the things the authored mentioned, the pros were greater than the cons since I worked for a company that rented out a snazzy office at CIC in Cambridge, MA. In a CODIV-19-world, I'm not sure I'd ever want to be in those sort of close quarters again, though a change of scenery would be nice!

Re: I hope work from home continues

#407

Post by patrickserrano »

folkrav wrote: post #198
blunte wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In my remote experience, I definitely don't talk to my colleagues that much. Maybe you should, then. I speak to my colleagues at the very least 30 minutes to 1h a day, and work full remote. > But when you're trying to build a small company, one approach is to make it feel like a family. An approach I immensely dislike. IMHO it's a huge waste of time to pretend like most employees aren't just there to make a living.…

I always find this position to be really interesting because as an adult I've had a really hard time making new friends.

So working in an environment that values and supports employees creating friendships that extend outside of the office has been a huge benefit for me.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#408

Post by xapata »

mumblemumble wrote: post #273
protonimitate wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Hot take: There's a whole way of communicating and handling team organization that grew up around 20th century business management culture, and it just doesn't work well with remote teams. Methods that do work well with remote teams, though, don't work well with traditional deeply hierarchical management structures. At bes…

The communication skills and preferences that are best for remote teams are different than those for in-office teams. Until you can retrain your staff or transition to different staff, a manager might be better off asking people to come back to the office.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#409

Post by silicon2401 »

necrotic_comp wrote: post #367
munificent wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 worry a lot about how this cuts the bottom rungs off the ladder for junior developers. Senior developers can be very productive without frequent access to in-person help, and are valuable enough that they can get work-from-home if they want. But junior developers have more fr…

As much as people don't like it, our current culture of having a video conference open all day with everyone in (breaking out into smaller calls when necessary) brings down the level of "hey, can I ask you a question?" bc we can see if someone is at their desk. I think this is something that would work for more junior people as well, and I'd be happy to break out / share a screen as needed.

> our current culture of having a video conference open all day with everyone in

this is incredibly bad for the environment. i just hope it's at least not as bad as commuting

Re: I hope work from home continues

#410

Post by novok »

mumblemumble wrote: post #273
protonimitate wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Hot take: There's a whole way of communicating and handling team organization that grew up around 20th century business management culture, and it just doesn't work well with remote teams. Methods that do work well with remote teams, though, don't work well with traditional deeply hierarchical management structures. At bes…

If we didn't have managers, all the planning, negotiating, syncing, communication & meetings stuff overflows into the engineers themselves, who might get grumpy at doing something they really typically do not enjoy, which is management work. If you remove the managers, your staff engineers quickly start becoming defacto managers.

PM work, management work and all of that is work, and someone has to do the work and if the managers / PMs don't do that work other people start taking up those jobs. That stuff doesn't go away with the magic wand of remote.

Yes there is an argument that those jobs make a bunch of extra work that may not of been necessary, but that also applies to engineers themselves. Every job role creates extra subjectively unnecessary work.

And I am saying this as someone who has been an engineer my entire career, I haven't been a manager.

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