We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
blog.davidtate.org
We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
1–10 of 226 posts
Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
#2I've run my company remotely since inception, I hate the idea of making people commute for free.
But one thing I've struggled with since growing to a size where the number of employees is more than I can keep mental track of is measuring individual performance and success.
Can anyone share any resources on how to handle that? What sort of metrics can one use to realistically measure the performance of a developer or designer where work consists of changing requirments & lots of back and forth? How to handle employees who seem to be working low hours or slacking off? How to reward those which have been working efficiently & productively? Any advice or experiences will be appreciated.
Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
#3> I can't imagine another day of long Zoom meetings.
The pandemic really reinforced to me that so many of these are pointless, at least for many participants. I have played games with co-workers, gone to sleep, done freelance work, had lunch (away from my desk), and all manner of other things through pretty much every meeting over 1 hour that I have had this pandemic. Especially the ceremonies like retro (exercise in taking notes and throwing them away), sprint planning (creating a faux schedule and throwing it away as code is done when it is done), and even in many cases the daily standup. Ditto for departmental meetings.
We cargo culted a lot of processes to WFH and will cargo cult them back upon return to office. What WFH lets me do is opt out of them and just have the conversation happen in the background instead of me being stuck in a meeting room.
Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
#4I've run my company remotely since inception, I hate the idea of making people commute for free. But one thing I've struggled with since growing to a size where the number of employees is more than I can keep mental track of is measuring individual performance and success. Can anyone share any resources on how to handle that? What sort of metrics can one use to realistically measure the performance of a developer or…
If you can't keep it all in your head then you could type it in a file. But sounds like you may need another manager or lead or two to help with tracking success. The other thing you can do is track team success based on project.
You would not want to use metrics but rather knowledge of the actual effectiveness of the programmer. Evaluating this requires someone with programming knowledge who can see first-hand what their code is and what they accomplish on the project.
Again look at the work output rather than your guesses about their hours. If they are accomplishing their tasks then they are not slacking off. If they are not accomplishing their tasks, make sure they have motivating work and autonomy. Having covered all of the above, the next step if you really have a problem is a serious warning and probably just firing them if/when they don't radically change their behavior which is somewhat unlikely to occur.
Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
#5I've run my company remotely since inception, I hate the idea of making people commute for free. But one thing I've struggled with since growing to a size where the number of employees is more than I can keep mental track of is measuring individual performance and success. Can anyone share any resources on how to handle that? What sort of metrics can one use to realistically measure the performance of a developer or…
Do they deliver what is expected of them? What happens if you ask for more (as a test to see if they're slacking) over a period of weeks?
Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
#6I've tried a bunch of online whiteboard tools to design stuff (where stuff could be system architecture, UI, a business process, whatever), and nothing beats a whiteboard + post-its. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, it's possible, and I'd love to have some great counter-examples. Until then, I think that teams that can meet up in person will, on average, win over those who can't.
Other days I just have long list of individual tasks that I want to get through without being distracted. On those days I'd love to just work from home, have space to dramatically crash on my bed to think about things, go for walks, etc.
With these two things combined I think the hybrid approach is probably going to win out, either where employees can use their own judgement when to WFH, or maybe having a system around particular days of the week.
Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
#7I've run my company remotely since inception, I hate the idea of making people commute for free. But one thing I've struggled with since growing to a size where the number of employees is more than I can keep mental track of is measuring individual performance and success. Can anyone share any resources on how to handle that? What sort of metrics can one use to realistically measure the performance of a developer or…
One of the few good parts of scrum is to have developers judge difficulty before assigning work. It’s not going to be completely accurate so 800 vs 900 units over a few months is probably meaningless. However, very large differences are a sign of problems as are code quality issues etc.
At a more basic level measuring value created vs what you pay someone is far more important than measuring hours worked.
Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
#8I've run my company remotely since inception, I hate the idea of making people commute for free. But one thing I've struggled with since growing to a size where the number of employees is more than I can keep mental track of is measuring individual performance and success. Can anyone share any resources on how to handle that? What sort of metrics can one use to realistically measure the performance of a developer or…
Do they deliver what is expected of them? What happens if you ask for more (as a test to see if they're slacking) over a period of weeks?
Please don’t “test” to see if people are slacking when they’re wfh. Successful wfh requires a high degree of trust. Everyone benefits from that increased trust. It’s an unspoken upside of wfh.
> Do they deliver what is expected of them?
If the answer to this question is “yes”, then congrats! You have a great team and shouldn’t waste your energy (and their well-being) worrying if they are working hard or not.
Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
#9People are not homogenous, and that includes both managers and employees. I’ve been working remote for the majority of 2.5 years now and I’m okay with it but it’s not great. Some coworkers absolutely lost empathy when they stopped seeing other people in person and I’m sure managing them is a struggle and the transition there has been awkward to say the least. Some are seemingly more productive but it’s not clear to be something which is sustainable/reliable because it’s not clear if they are more productive per hour worked or just working more hours because they didn’t have anything better to do.
In short, I can’t exactly blame managers wanting to return to prior conditions to reduce the level of uncertainty, especially if the last year has been a mixed bag. I do think most people I know want to return to a hybrid model but there was already a significant part-time WFH culture before the pandemic (1-2 days a week). moving to WFH 2-4 days a week is probably where it will end up.
Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
#10I have a ridiculous sounding but very important to me reason for my preference to work at home: bowel movements.
I worked with a small team in a small office. Everybody is typically at their desk in silence with the occasional manager or sales person on the phone. At predictable intervals throughout the day, someone will get up and be gone extra long.
You know, and everybody else knows, they've gone for a number 2.
Occasionally a manager will say "where's X" and someone will respond they stepped out. Nobody cares, and yes I'm being neurotic, but it is still slightly embarrassing that everybody _knows_.
Again, nothing is devastating here, it's just... awkward.
The fact that I can have my morning coffee and then when the urge comes, march off to my porcelain throne without anyone knowing better, answer Slack messages from my phone, etc. is one of the great joys of no longer being in an office for me.