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Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

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Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#481
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much work are you doing at these 10 companies? Are you writing code or just literally doing nothing?

Yes writing code, I provide enough actual progress that people must assume I'm either extremely methodical or woefully incompetent. I put in about an hour per job per day. I'm logged-in on slack/teams/etc and disable idle indicators. I use a virtual KVM to switch between laptops as needed. The biggest problem I run into is video meetings occurring at the same time, those I usually just disable video and blame it on i…

> I target overly funded growth-mode companies where they're focused on adding unnecessary headcount to work on poorly defined projects.

This line convinced me you know what you're talking about :).

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably already know this but internet outside of the Bay Area is actually really good. We live in the sticks and we can get gigabit.

Sure, my point is that ISPs will start increasing their rates to squeeze more out of remote workers.

My ISP (Comcast) emailed me yesterday with a 33% speed boost, for free. They just redefined the tier to be 800Mbps instead of 600. This anecdote does not invalidate your prediction, but the correct prediction is "we don't know" rather than stating your point with such certainty.

Can they? Sure. Have they indicated as such? No.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of my best friendships were forged online, often in groups collaborating on doing real work. I have not been able to get any such spontaneity during remote work with my group or division at a large tech company with mostly young coworkers. I haven't been able to figure out why. > the “oh no! I despise slack” group Chat can be super useful, but can also create a nasty interruption culture. I don't know what the t…

>Chat can be super useful, but can also create a nasty interruption culture How is does chat creates an interruption culture compared to people literally standing in your shoulder and directly interrupting you? At least with chat I can decide to ignore the notifications until I’m finished with my current task.

Sending a chat message is a really low bar: people send off chat messages at will, without respect to whether someone looks like they're concentrating, wearing headphones, have the door closed, are in the office, whatever. This is fine so long as chat is regarded as async, but in a culture where people feel compelled to get them in real time, chat becomes super interrupty, even compared to people coming by.

If people exercise good judgement on ignoring notifications, it's less rough, though the tooling is really poor for using chat for async tracking, organization, triaging, and replies, even compared to emails or tickets.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but working from home for only a year, in pandemic conditions" About 18 months here (UK.) I'm a business owner (IT services) and I now do see the value of WFH. I really, really know the upsides and the downsides. My staff don't go off the boil when they are at home - they lose it and drift off when they don't feel ... loved. Call it what you will but when you are sat in a room at home which may not be very comfortab…

> My staff don't go off the boil when they are at home - they lose it and drift off when they don't feel ... loved. I just want my own personal home space back. Powering down the laptop for the weekend and hiding it is not the same as leaving it locked up at the office. With WFH and my single bedroom apartment, I feel I've lost privacy, personal space that I had once earned. And it's driving my depression insane know…

Sorry, its taken me a while to respond.

"And it's driving my depression insane knowing my work and personal are all in the same room. WFH works if you can separate yourself from your person quarters but when you can't it really bites."

I'm an old git now and have space but back in the day I ... didn't. I'm not trying to say I understand your particular situation but I do sympathise and I hope it doesn't sound trite.

I wish you all the best and that's why I'm responding to a comment made two days ago.

Take care.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest question right now about sustained wfh is how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office. A year ago, I remotely onboarded for a new position and recently I can head back into the office, and there's a massive difference for me between the virtual relationships I built and the in-person ones. I learned more about people that I had spent months zooming/emai…

> My biggest question right now about sustained wfh is how much of the current productivity is the result of relationships that were built in the office. None. I started 3 different consulting jobs during the pandemic and always felt very productive and very connected to my colleagues, even though I never met them.

I'm glad, but this is one experience.

Many people, if not most, have more potential to connect better when more senses are engaged and more experiences are shared. These relationships sustain over time, with some degradation of course.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#486
post #189

Speaking as someone who now works remotely permanently, this has been... life-changing. So for 10 years I lived in NYC and--don't get me wrong--there are lots of things I liked about NYC but I'm so over the summers and the winters. Also bear in mind that I think NYC is infinitely better for most people to live in than the Bay Area. But I now live in Florida. It's about the 182nd day in a row where it's been 70-80F. S…

Hope you vote Democrat!

I was being sarcastic. AKA Don't forget why you left NY!

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every SV company I've ever worked for has explicitly disclaimed rights to my work done off hours with my own equipment... as they are required to do under CA law.

I'm not sure how you can claim all work was done during off hours with ten full-time jobs. If OP got caught he could have some very expensive legal problems.

I was responding to this sentence in the parent:

"A typical silicone valley company's contract usually have some clause saying that all your creative work while contracted with the company, even on off hours, belongs to the company."

My experience, working for a number of silicon valley companies, has been the exact opposite. There is a clause that says (in legalese) "we don't own stuff you do on your own time with your own equipment if it isn't related to what you do at work"

It is my understanding that California public policy actually requires companies to put this disclaimer in work contracts.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#488
post #75

I currently have 10 fully remote engineering jobs. The bar is so low, oversight is non-existent, and everyone is so forgiving for under performance I can coast about 4-8 weeks before a given job fires me. Currently on a $1.5M run-rate for comp this year. And the interviewing process is so much faster today, companies are desperate, it takes me 2-3hrs of total effort to land a new job with thousands to chose from.

Is this serious?

Doesn't matter. Industry management will hear about it and start cracking on their remote worker. FUD is out either way.

If it is serious, he/she should have keep it private. That's why we can't have nice things.

Re: Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees

#489
post #75

I currently have 10 fully remote engineering jobs. The bar is so low, oversight is non-existent, and everyone is so forgiving for under performance I can coast about 4-8 weeks before a given job fires me. Currently on a $1.5M run-rate for comp this year. And the interviewing process is so much faster today, companies are desperate, it takes me 2-3hrs of total effort to land a new job with thousands to chose from.

You're a true 10x developer.
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