I hope work from home continues • Hacker News Board

Re: I hope work from home continues

#411

Post by BurningFrog » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #292

BurningFrog wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty easy to get two full time programming jobs and do both remotely. Being in the office at least ensures you're not in another office.

Being in the office at least ensures you're not in another office. How? If I'm willing to work another job while I'm at my first job, no one would know if the code I'm working on my screen belongs to job #1 or job #2. The employer could use screen monitoring, but then they could do that while I'm at home and see that either I'm working on a second project, or that my computer is idle for long periods of time when I'm…

> Though I'm not sure it matters - if I can work 2 jobs and still provide adequate productivity to each employer, then why do they care?

Measuring programming productivity per person is very hard.

Measuring 40 hour attendance is easy.

So while everyone agrees that A would be better, in reality the approximation of B will have to do.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#412

Post by blunte » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

dexterdog wrote: post #265

riscy wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the founder’s dream: gaining familial power over young people’s entire lives to further your start-up, before they realize they should develop a life of their own outside of work to avoid complete burnout.

I can almost hear his "Our Incredible Journey" post already.

I'm a worker in the trenches myself. If you read a different story, that's based on your perception or experience rather than my motives. You can look through my previous posts. I want everyone to be happy and fulfilled, and money is not my driving force.

All that said, I do believe that doing things well and providing a great collaborative atmosphere (even family-like perhaps) can lead to high performance.

What I do not want is people merely trading their time, their lives, for a bit of money. That is not living.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#413

Post by w0mbat » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

w0mbat wrote: post #395

bigcorp-slave wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live in Silicon Valley? Nice homes cannot be chosen close to work. All homes in the South Bay that aren’t literally falling down are multi-million-dollar. I personally know people who bought a $2.5m home with a rat infestation.

The south bay has hordes of pretty nice apartment complexes for newly arrived renters, and newish condos and townhouses for entry level buyers. Eventually you trade up to a 3 bedroom house or whatever you need. I have worked at various tech companies since the 90s, am by no means rich but I've have always lived somewhere decent that's within 15 minutes drive of work.

(Yes I know my bio says "Oakland" right now. I am working out of my partner's house during Covid. I still own a place in the South Bay).

Re: I hope work from home continues

#414

Post by unfocused » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #245

gorkemyurt wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Le Sigh, during COVID I don't go anywhere. Carrying a monitor is not a problem. But when I traveled, many co-working spaces offer halfway decent monitors for rent. And if you're staying for a while, you can buy one locally and honestly just leave it there when you go. We're talking about $200. It's just part of the cost of being a digital nomad (which you totally make up in many other ways). Oh, but chairs for me are…

Just like to the other commenter mentioned, be careful of standing all day. My mother was a hairdresser for 50+ years. She needed operations on both her knees.

I think it's all a balance of sitting and standing, and not taking one to the extreme. I say this as I just threw my back out a few weeks ago, because I was sitting all day :( So yeah, I'm not a model person to listen to either!

Re: I hope work from home continues

#415

Post by godelski » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

duckfang wrote: post #156

mrweasel wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you clearify “don’t care”? Because here you simply report the company anonymously. You even have a person among the staff, who is extremely difficult to fire, that can do the reporting for you. Companies will be fined for this kind of environment and the office will be closed if things aren’t improved. You can’t choose to not care.

> You can’t choose to not care. It's all a matter of priorities. If caring means you lose your job, yeah, you're not gonna care. And losing your job in the USA means: hunger, homelessness, no internet, less chance of being hired with unemployment record, assumption that you did something terrible, low/no medical, etc. For many, especially those whom can't save a nest egg of appreciable value (6 months out of work kin…

Unless the company goes under this likely isn't going to happen. Half the things mentioned only cost a few hundred dollars to resolve. They'd have to be running on some crazy margins. And given that environment, anyone could have reported. It's anonymous.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#416

Post by jonnycomputer » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

bagacrap wrote: post #317

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…

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

I've never had a DUI. But I come from a neighborhood with many problems. I see many things.

Maybe leisure cyclists should spend more time critiquing their own culture a bit more. Have a little more introspection into how their hobby affects other people, reinforces class barriers.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#417

Post by jonnycomputer » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

nprateem wrote: post #341

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…

I miss: * The office hotties

I have one office-hottie. My wife.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#418

Post by npsimons » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

xapata wrote: post #408

mumblemumble wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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.

Meanwhile, those who already have remote work skills won't stick around to have their time wasted by being forced to work in an office.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#419

Post by blunte » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #327

blunte wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that what you read? No, I am creating the kind of company I would have loved to work for. Salary is fine, but I know firsthand that if there is good free food, I will stay and work through lunch (or at least talk with my colleagues about work challenges while eating the nice food). Look, if someone is not happy with their work, free food or free trips is only going to hold them in place for a short while. They abs…

When fun and camaraderie happens naturally on a project, it's really amazing to be a part of. When an org tries to force "fun", it's awful. I think you are dreaming of the first kind, and everyone against you in this thread is having nightmares about the second. But I've also learned something about dealing with "corporate BS" -- if it's at least reasonably well intentioned, one can still decide to make the most of i…

Very true. Marketed "fun" is usually not. And frankly, I don't have energy or patience to play the marketing game.

But I do know what fun is. I worked in the gaming industry at one point, and later in life I worked in places with Friday parties and foosball and food and spirits. Party play time can be a whole lot of fun - the kind you talk about Monday and even Tuesday and then look forward to next Friday.

Foster an environment where people work hard and you all gain, and you get to play nicely on a regular basis, and you have a place where you don't have to compete for talent. People seek you out.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#420

Post by vp8989 » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #330

trentnix wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Tru…

> 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…

Engineering culture should be disseminated via documents rather than oral lore.

If it's disseminated via oral lore it's expensive to change and is often misinterpreted across a large enough org.

A silent killer of engineering orgs is bad practices that stick around because that's the way it's always been done. No one knows why because it wasn't written down. The only way to fix that is for someone high enough to provide blessing, but maybe none of those things are individually disruptive enough to get the CTO involved. So everyone eats the costs in perpetuity.

Much easier to just write everything down.

Increased difficulty for juniors to ramp up when you are remote is a symptom of a culture with lots of overly complicated processes that are not well documented.