What if remote work didn’t mean working from home? • Hacker News Board

Re: What if remote work didn’t mean working from home?

#181

Post by hinkley » Wed, May 26, 2021, 3:13 AM UTC

valand wrote: post #177

geoduck14 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the Happy Hours: In 2019, my team would occasionally need to work long hours or would deliver something awesome. I would reward them with HH and dinner/late meal. It gave me a chance to say "thanks" and for us to bond over the challenge we overcame. I can't do that anymore! I've don't virtual HH, but it isn't the same! I would REALLY like a virtual solution to "bond with your team" and "say thanks in a mean…

Personal experience which is at the very opposite point of the spectrum from yours. I have had the pleasurable working in a team where bonding is simply working toward a common goal. This was an extremely cohesive team. Our main motivation of working long hour was to push the company to a more beneficial position so that we are also benefited from it. The reward is the good result of the work itself and going home/ou…

Did you have much banter in meetings, or were the organizers all business? Some places make it very hard to bond during work hours.

Re: What if remote work didn’t mean working from home?

#182

Post by ecpottinger » Wed, May 26, 2021, 3:14 AM UTC

the_mar wrote: post #133

wott wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But surely “let’s knock off at three today and go down the pub, thanks for all the hard work” is a positive for most people? Definitely not. 1. I am not fond of drinking with workmates. An occasional, incidental, one-on-one or not much more: OK. In groups ("teams"): no thanks, this isn't school, we are not students, so no pseudo school party. 2. I abhor having drinks with people who have any kind of hierarchical po…

who hurt you? obviously don't get too drunk with coworkers, but do you know there is a way to have a drink or two and not turn it into a fraternity event

And there is a way not to drink at all, it is called saying "NO!".

What makes you think I want to even have one drink of alcohol?

Re: What if remote work didn’t mean working from home?

#183

Post by ecpottinger » Wed, May 26, 2021, 3:14 AM UTC

late2part wrote: post #140

wott wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But surely “let’s knock off at three today and go down the pub, thanks for all the hard work” is a positive for most people? Definitely not. 1. I am not fond of drinking with workmates. An occasional, incidental, one-on-one or not much more: OK. In groups ("teams"): no thanks, this isn't school, we are not students, so no pseudo school party. 2. I abhor having drinks with people who have any kind of hierarchical po…

There are people in this world who say "Don't trust a guy (or gal) who won't have a beer with you."

And those are the people I do not trust.

Re: What if remote work didn’t mean working from home?

#184

Post by Jcampuzano2 » Wed, May 26, 2021, 3:16 AM UTC

ivarv wrote: post #130

Angostura wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Let’s knock off at three today. I'm going down the pub - anyone care to join me? I'm buying."

An argument could be made that non-pub goers are still excluded from some kind of reward or compensation. If the buyer was spending their own personal money that might be one thing, but more often than not the funds come out of company expenses.

In consulting companies I've worked for (and I'm inclined at least in part to agree) it would be argued that it is not necessarily equivalent to compensation since work is usually talked about in some capacity at these events.

That's why they don't mind paying for these, because it is seen as additional collaboration/problem solving time. but they 100% would not be okay with handing out additional money to those who do not wish to attend.

Edit: To clarify as well, I don't think people should feel forced or inclined to attend these events for whatever reason they wish, this is just the argument I know and quite literally is in onboarding training I've taken.

Re: What if remote work didn’t mean working from home?

#185

Post by hinkley » Wed, May 26, 2021, 3:16 AM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #57

leecarraher wrote: post #22

I think we will soon see a dip in productivity.whenever assessing trends, you should never base conclusions on outlier events and we are basing too much of the wfh success on this past year. A year when you couldn't go out and do things, when people feared for their jobs amid a global crisis and felt a call of duty to keep on working.

A lot of managers seem to have an unshakeable convention that as soon as workers are no longer cattle-penned into an office that they'll turn into lazy slobs. As if the only thing stopping them from vegging out on the couch, eating ice cream and watching Jerry Springer during the work day is the watchful and benevolent gaze of their adult supervisors from across the open office floor plan. Believe it or not, most pro…

> as soon as workers are no longer cattle-penned into an office that they'll turn into lazy slobs

That's full on projecting. It's what they'd do.

I'm trying to figure out what options I'm going to be interested in to work part time once I have enough money to retire, because I'm always going to be making something. It's why I got into this industry in the first place, instead of getting a job trying to trick other people into doing work.

Re: What if remote work didn’t mean working from home?

#186

Post by ecpottinger » Wed, May 26, 2021, 3:21 AM UTC

novok wrote: post #136

hparadiz wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop assuming people like to drink.

As someone who never has drunk, it's fine. You just drink fizzy water, diet coke and free food or whatever and nobody gives a shit. It's a work happy hour, nobody should be getting drunk and nobody notices.

It excludes people like me who can't stand the idiot actions I see once people get drunk. And often once drunk they try to force me to drink with them. I had on more than one occasion used force to stop someone trying to force a drink onto me.

Worse, later they claim they would never do such a thing.

Re: What if remote work didn’t mean working from home?

#187

Post by dheera » Wed, May 26, 2021, 3:25 AM UTC

deviation wrote: post #142

Some people fail to recognise the actual problem here. I, among many, live within The deciding factors were - that I didn't have to leave the room for a personal call so that I didn't disturb anyone. - that I didn't need to have six seperate conversations in the morning before being able to sit down and begin my work. - that I didn't need to sacrifice portions of my lunchtime to grab a coffee with others and look lik…

A often less-mentioned problem of remote work for many in my circle is that working out of your cramped San Francisco bedroom isn't always productive. Many need a dedicated, well-lit, and preferably sunlit office space at home to be truly productive and companies have not normalized giving out rent subsidies to people, even though the amount of rent subsidy necessary to have a dedicated office space at home would be much less than the equivalent square footage of commercial office space.

Re: What if remote work didn’t mean working from home?

#188

Post by hinkley » Wed, May 26, 2021, 3:26 AM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #15

If work still has to be conducted by videocall they may as well just be at home it's just an inefficient either way and you still lose the ability to have creative ideation discussion that just doesn't work over videocall because of the time delay and forced one at a time speaking. I do think WFH is here to stay but I also see an uncomfortable divide is going to form both in the types of work given to the two sides a…

I've recently become aware of the fact that since I am good at imagining things in my head, I'm much less hamstrung by these virtual meeting than other people. For sure not all of them are as affected, but some are definitely getting the short end there.

Hopefully there are some companies out there that thought this pandemic was going to go on as long as it has and have been working on better collaboration tools.

Re: What if remote work didn’t mean working from home?

#189

Post by ecpottinger » Wed, May 26, 2021, 3:26 AM UTC

smabie wrote: post #131

hparadiz wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop assuming people like to drink.

I mean, I think most people do like to drink? Am I wrong? I know I like to drink.

YES! You are thinking the whole world is the same as your location.

Re: What if remote work didn’t mean working from home?

#190

Post by pomian » Wed, May 26, 2021, 3:29 AM UTC

neilv wrote: post #128

In the early 2000s, when I was sharing a really dumpy student apartment, and had no office, I often spent the day working around town, mostly from parks and cafes. Cafes can be distracting, but they had power for charging old laptop batteries, for the cost of a coffee, and sometimes had free WiFi. Probably most productive were park benches, and sitting under particular trees. I carried a bag with a laptop, a high-pow…

Except the screen technology, which seems worse. The higher end the laptop the worse it seems to work in the sun light. My last good sunlight laptop was a super cheap atom based 11" Acer. I accomplished more on that than any Alienware, XPS, etc - because it worked in any light, and the batteries lasted longer than me.