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

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

#191

Post by hparadiz »

ecpottinger wrote: post #189
smabie wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not even that. American work drinking culture is just not up to par. You're expected to pound coffee all day then go and drink on an empty stomach at 5 before you've eaten dinner. It's just not realistic.

Heaven forbid my first meal of the day is lunch and not breakfast.

People who have "normal" eating habits just can't understand.

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

#192

Post by Aeolun »

ne0flex wrote: post #157
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…

Fully agree. I have about a 15min walk away from my work place. Recently, my company has annoucned its re-entry plan and have decided on a hybrid work environment in order to "foster collaboration and increase productivity." My department was classified as a 'mostly-essential' department which means that we'd be required to be in the office 3 -4 days a week. I immediately emailed management requesting a near 100% tra…

It is clear that these are your real numbers, so last year you obviously weren’t even trying.

We’ll retroactively reduce last years raise to 1%. The difference will be held from next month’s salary.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Also, your request is rejected. Someone clearly has to keep an eye on you to make sure you don’t slack off again.

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

#193

Post by ecpottinger »

spiderjerusalem wrote: post #84
egypturnash wrote: post #19

This has been my life for years except without the “renting a place” part. I work in cafes. I work in parks. I work sitting on a bench taking shelter from the rain on my way to somewhere else. I work anywhere I have space to take my Wacom tablet out of my bag and plug it into my laptop, and the desire to spend more time working today. I also work at home in my studio but getting away from the distractions of home is,…

very much this, I'm a very restless person and I _need_ to move every 2-3 hours. Cafe hopping is very very important to my general flow. I also need noise and general life happening around me. Offices are too artificial an environment and my apartment is too silent.

Blues Bars for me. It may be strange, but I get a table in the corner, tell the bar tender to keep the coke and lime coming and my programming just flows with the music.

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

#194

Post by strken »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #152
shannongreen wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I would hate working with someone like this. You don't have to be super active, socially, but treating the other people (and they _are_ people) on your team as just drones is a) not conducive to good collaboration and b) pretty damn rude.

It doesn’t have to be rude. Seeing it as rude is an imposition on those of us who don’t see it as rude. I’m pretty antisocial, personally, and love it when my workmates get to the point and focus on the actual “drone”-tasks. Why? Because that is why I do software. I don’t do software because I love people. I don’t do software because I love the paycheck. I do software because I love software and every second away fro…

That's not really the same as not caring about your co-workers as human beings, though. I'm happy to leave introverts alone and not drag them to unhappy hour with me, but they're still worth something as people, and I'd still help them out if they e.g. got hospitalised and needed someone to bring them clothes and a book.

I interpreted "I don't care about you as a person" as "I don't think you have moral worth outside your instrumental value to me", which goes beyond rudeness and into questions of whether the person can be trusted at all.

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

#195

Post by ryandrake »

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…

Different stokes for different folks. To me, WFH purely means I avoid my crushing 2.5hr-each-way commute. If my employer built an office next to my house, I'd happily go to the office every day. Or even better, if my employer built an office in a cheaper cost-of-living area like the Nevada desert, I could move to a trailer there and happily go to the office every day. I'm not enamored with my home office. I don't really care as much about working from some room in my home as I care about not having to white-knuckle it down 3 interstate highways just to get to an office where I spend all my time having video conference meetings with remote teams anyway.

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

#196

Post by ecpottinger »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #63
blakesterz wrote: post #10

"Here’s my proposal: organizations that allow remote work should not only encourage these employees to find professional spaces near (but distinct from) their homes—they should also directly subsidize these cognitive escapes. The cost need not be prohibitive. If we turn back to our author examples, we see that a workspace doesn’t need to be aesthetically pleasing, or well-equipped, or air-conditioned (or even have wa…

I could not imagine taking anyone seriously who says I should leave my air conditioned house, comfy office set up exactly how I like it, for "that a workspace doesn’t need to be aesthetically pleasing, or well-equipped, or air-conditioned (or even have walls or a roof!" Unreal. The disconnect here is just shocking.

Don't forget the one hour commute each way, every work day. My friend who now works from home, now can get up in the morning, walk the dog, make breakfast and never has to hurry to make sure she catches the train.

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

#197

Post by ryandrake »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #79
gajjanag wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the ability to tune out of useless meetings by muting audio/video is great.

I wish Zoom had an in-app mute button. I'd love it if I didn't have to mute the entire computer. EDIT: For MacOS, I found this: https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic

Sorry if this is insensitive or just clueless, but, to you and OP: If you have nothing to contribute to a meeting and have no reason to hear the things that are said at the meeting, why do you even attend? Just skip it. Maybe I'm privileged by being farther along in my career, but when I see a meeting that I don't get anything out of and don't contribute anything to, I just decline and move on with my life.

Do you really think merely having your name show up as one of 35 attendees in Zoom is really going to positively affect your career?

I used to be worried about things like face time and "they'll notice I'm gone" but I gave that worry up. I guarantee at most companies it's really not a big deal. No VP goes back to his office after a meeting and says to himself "Hmm, DroneEngineer43318 was not silently sitting at my meeting. I must ensure he doesn't get promoted next cycle!". If you're not presenting or need the information, nobody is going to care that you're absent.

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

#198

Post by Jagerbizzle »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #37
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…

Yup. Ever after 5pm work thing I've been "rewarded" with is still work. Even if it's more fun than working at my desk its still work. I'm not able to do with that time what I want. It's only a reward if it is replacing work. And really it's only a reward if the amount of time that it is replacing is taken out of the sprint planning. At the end of the day if you take a weeknight from me I'm going to be annoyed at best…

I'm trying to get some budget right now to do a in-person social event for my team now that almost everyone is fully vaccinated, and I've been extremely explicit about scheduling it during regular business hours (1pm-3pm for example), to ensure there's no competition between this event and what people actually want to do with their evenings/spare time.

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

#199

Post by mjrbrennan »

avelis wrote: post #94

This only works when quiet time to think and work is respected. Cowork spaces are usually terrible at it.

Yeah I think about going to coworking spaces now and then (I am full remote since October 2019) and then I remember that all of them play music over the speakers and how awful that is for concentration, not to mention the loud conversations and phone calls.

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

#200

Post by [deleted] »

late2part wrote: post #162
dylan604 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a term that's used "not real money", and the stock-as-compensation is an example. There are plenty of examples of people working their asses off on the hope/promise/gamble that it will be rewarded with a high stock price and then the stock not reaching those soaring heights or worse the company runs out of runway and the stock is worthless. Now those people realize they were making a lot less money than they…

That's fair. But my kids don't have to work a day in their lives because of my stock as compensation, so there's always a counterpoint, I suppose.

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