I hope work from home continues • Hacker News Board

Re: I hope work from home continues

#471

Post by robalfonso » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #455

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…

My company promotes themselves as a “flat connected organization” yet our CEO has adamantly stated that work from home will not be possible as long as he is CEO. This is despite the company doing better than ever. He leans on a belief that some ephemeral energy and cultural value is being sapped away from working remotely and that we are “running on fumes” through COVID. I don’t believe any of it, and the company has…

This is key. These aren’t bad ideas. Face time is important, non work proximity is important (ie lunch). None of this requires 5 day a week presence.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#472

Post by folkrav » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

glitchcrab wrote: post #436

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.

I think it depends on how you view your colleagues, and also on your working conditions and location. My entire company is remote (albeit with a small office in a co-working space a few local people sometimes use), and we have two week-long on-sites every year (recent times notwithstanding). There is no pressure to attend, but the entire company is always there (unless they have scheduling conflicts etc) - that says…

> I've made friends for life at this company.

I've just said this earlier in another comment, but I've never had what I'd consider true friendships come out from work acquaintances. I just don't consider "I have fun with you sometimes" to be friendship, and there's exactly 0 people from all the places I've worked at I would feel comfortable say, calling at 3am if I ever felt depressed. That's friendship in my eyes, and a company retreat would never bring that kind of intimacy that's for me a requirement to actual friendship.

Now there are definitely people I would work with again without hesitation, and I'd grab a drink any time with most of my old colleagues.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#473

Post by d1zzy » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

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…

2 ways I can answer this:

1. Personally, working from home has been a mixed bag. When I'm allowed to focus on one single task, I can do pretty well. The comforts of having my own office room, high quality monitors, keyboard and speakers listening to music are very nice. The additional latency accessing my remote workstation not so great (and that is required, because of company rules not allowing source access outside of corp network). Also, anything that required a lot of human interaction has been pretty bad, video conferencing is a poor substitute, I've found (as someone who doesn't really enjoy socializing) and depending on where you are in the project (is the team already established, do they know each other IRL, the tasks are clear or are you just starting a new team for a new project, scoping up tasks and everything) it requires more or less interaction. At the beginning of a project there is a ton of little details that get missed in the initial plans which can be resolved very fast in person and which always seem to resolve slower remotely, no matter how good use we attempt to make of all the tools available (team chat, video conference, etc). As such, whenever my company asked in WFH surveys how I would rate my productivity, I always rated it lower than 100%, around 60%-70%. In terms of commute, it's a wash-off: yes, I don't spend time commuting now but the extra time I have I just spend it in longer videogame sessions at night (so not exactly the best/most healthy way to use that extra time) and when I was commuting to the office I'd often commute by bike (at about 100 miles biked per week) while now I barely bike a third of that because I force myself to get out on the bike every weekend to at least have some physical activity.

2. Company wide, based on the the surveys done, it seems most people have rated their productivity lower than when in office. As such, it is no surprise to me that the company is looking at an accelerated schedule to get people back in office.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#474

Post by yardie » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #195

yardie wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Start making 1-1 meetings just to get to know people better and the kind of things they do. Make sure you mostly work on projects where you can collaborate closely with 1-3 other people.

I'd like to but unfortunately they are using that stupid department billing system. For me to collaborate I have to be invited in, basically. Can't have an engineer working on a project they aren't billing for no matter how interesting it looks.

I'm trying to find the project managers so they know I'm available and to include me on future projects. The current projects are staffed up and any change in manpower is a change request, client approval, etc.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#475

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #455

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…

My company promotes themselves as a “flat connected organization” yet our CEO has adamantly stated that work from home will not be possible as long as he is CEO. This is despite the company doing better than ever. He leans on a belief that some ephemeral energy and cultural value is being sapped away from working remotely and that we are “running on fumes” through COVID. I don’t believe any of it, and the company has…

I’m so tired of this “ad hoc water cooler chat” suddenly being elevated as the most important part of office work. It’s never in the past been valued by these execs, and on the contrary sometimes punished (hey, quit socializing and get back to work!). But, now, all of a sudden when these execs are scrambling to find some reason to return to the office, they trot out “serendipitous hallway conversations” as the great holy reason for the office’s existence. Sorry, but I call bullshit.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#476

Post by bradstewart » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

zikzak wrote: post #431

lvspiff wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a building that was right next to the runway under the flight path for a major international airport. We could wave to people in the windows. Our AC went out (In las vegas - it gets to 120+ some days in summer) and they brought in portable A/C units that were louder than the planes. Then they took our bottled water away. While these issues aren't normal they are out there and they are replicated by employ…

I'll bite. Why did they take away the water?

Not OP, but usually "bottled" water is taken away for environmental reasons, replaced by filtered faucets, which are often non maintained and cleaned properly.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#477

Post by mumblemumble » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

novok wrote: post #410

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…

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…

> all the planning, negotiating, syncing, communication & meetings stuff overflows into the engineers themselves

That is traditionally done by managers, but it doesn't actually need to be handled someone who is anyone's boss in particular. It's handleable, often with less overall effort, by people who are at the same level as every other team member on the org chart. The whole boss/report dynamic tends to inhibit clear communication, because circumspect people tend to to communicate less-than-candidly with those who hold the power to advance or inhibit their career progress.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#478

Post by mLuby » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

jmkni wrote: post #23

I’m completely the opposite to be honest. I’ve found working from home lonely and isolating, and am badly missing the structure of getting up, showered and going into an office! For people at a certain stage of life, I’m sure working from home is great, but have some empathy for those of us it sucks for.

I hear you, but remember this is pandemic-enforced WFH, it's not normal.

Non-pandemic remote work gives you more time to socialize out and about with friends and family, travel (and maybe even work there), and do all sorts of fun things to relax and recharge that we can't really do right now because of the pandemic.

I'm pro-WFH/anti-RTO simply because I want us all to have the choice. Before the pandemic it was all office, during the pandemic it's all remote, and now it feels like the pendulum is swinging all the way back to all office, instead of landing in the middle ground of individual choice.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#479

Post by occz » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

techsupporter wrote: post #125

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.

> Do you live in Silicon Valley? Nice homes cannot be chosen close to work. And in large parts of the rest of the country, it's illegal to put homes close to work. Where I work is on the edge of an office campus on the edge of a suburb of Seattle. By city ordinance, virtually no housing is allowed anywhere near where I work. If you live in the same municipality as this office and work at it, your only choice to get t…

Contemporary zoning laws really are the worst.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#480

Post by thrower123 » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

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…

I always wondered how much of the push towards open offices and that sort of working conditions was driven, or perhaps, enabled, by recent grads who were accustomed to hot-desking in the library and working in study groups.