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We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons

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Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons

#11

Post by dvt »

There's a lot of vested interest in making people go back to the office. First, in large corporations, there's an entire army of middle managers that essentially do nothing but political machinations, micro-managing, and are the very definition of "market inefficiency." This has been accepted as a necessary evil of mega-corps but remote work threatens this delicate balance.

Second, there's also a lot of external pressure that pushes the office building as a bastion of productivity. From commercial real estate landlords to agents to contractors: many livelihoods are reliant on the exorbitant inefficiencies of office real estate. I remember when I was working for Edmunds.com, our new offices were better than Google's (the company spared no expense on the suspended rotating Corvettes[1] and free delivered lunches). But just a few years later (I had quit a year prior), over 100 employees were laid off[2], including several friends. Their jobs may have been secure had it not been for the $XX million dollar "new office" project that mostly served as an Instagram photo op.

In short, I think the argument in posts like this is oversimplified. It's not just "are people more productive from home?" -- the research has already been done on this, and we've all just been unwitting Guinea pigs for over a year now. The answer is a resounding "yes!" -- but that's hardly the only consideration.

[1] https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/edmunds-coms-new-headquarte...

[2] https://www.dailynews.com/2020/01/27/edmunds-com-to-lay-off-...

Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons

#12

Post by lastofthemojito »

I think a lot of the responses to the straw man's questions are reasonable and thoughtful. But I think this sentiment:

>I don't want to change the way I work, I just want people to join me in the office. My kids are driving me crazy. Is it weird to say I'm lonely; I miss my office friends.

Deserves more respect. There are lot of types of people out there, and it seems like at least some of them are energized by being surrounded by smart people doing interesting work. For whatever reason, for some folks, exchanging Slack messages with those same smart people isn't similarly energizing compared to overhearing and jumping into interesting in-person conversations, etc. Maybe the tech giants need to be very accommodating to remote work in order to maintain their massive workforces, but I think a lot of typical companies could just say "we prefer being in-office" and find sufficient local folks to make that happen. That won't be for everyone. But there might be a sizeable enough cohort that performs better in the office that it'll be a good option for some companies.

Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons

#14

Post by Arcanum-XIII »

namanyayg wrote: post #2

I'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…

Maybe change the scope you assess, and dive if you see problem. Or find a way to create smaller team, and delegate to the team lead the appreciation? Those are my usual ways of assessing teams when they grow too big.

Don’t forget also that the bigger the team, the harder it is to manage, so splitting is always a good options!

Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons

#16

Post by mkl95 »

I have worked at a few places that oppose remote work, middle management and leadership at these places have some common traits:

- They are control freaks. They feel the need to control their employees beyond their body of work, they want to control their lives. Useless "team bonding events" and intrusive behaviour are to be expected.

- They are very bad at minding their own business. These people often have a mix of extroversion, lack of self awareness, and a frivolous personality. They will interrupt developers and other knowledge workers and they couldn't care less about the thousands of €/$ that they waste, missed deadlines, etc. Ironically these are the people whose strong point is supposed to be their soft skills.

Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons

#17

Post by ryandrake »

MattGaiser wrote: post #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…

This one, I just don't get at all. If you have nothing to contribute to a meeting, and nothing to gain from listening, why are you joining the meeting to begin with? Just decline like a grown-up and get some actual work done. It doesn't do anyone any good to have you there on mute with the volume turned down, getting actual work done in the background. Nobody is going to notice you're gone, and if they do, who cares? You think the boss is going to sit there during the yearly performance review and say "Hmm, we were going to give Joe a raise, but I noticed that he skipped a lot of meetings where he wasn't really needed in the first place. Clearly bad performance!"

Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons

#18

Post by void_mint »

robbie-c wrote: post #6

I'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 individu…

I think it has to do with expressiveness. Mice + online whiteboarding tools are always a hassle, and are far far less expressive than just using your hands to draw shapes/words on a whiteboard. I don't really think online tools can replicate this process because of how hands-on it is. It's the same reason it's harder to draw on a WACOM vs. a piece of paper.

Being able to quickly draw some things that may or may not make sense, and then have someone else quickly draw on top of what you drew, and then sharing those ideas, is really hard to replicate online.

I don't think any of this is an argument against true WFH, I just think you'd have to change your process to accommodate the lack of interactive whiteboarding. RFPs + doc reviews + (for really big projects) in person quarterlies are definitely good enough, to me.

Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons

#19

Post by onebot »

comprev wrote: post #5
namanyayg wrote: post #2

I'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?

This is hard. Developers set expectations. How would a non-engineer manager have any idea if something should take hours vs days? Most managers ask engineers to estimate.

On the flip side, comparatively, it is much easier to compare performance vs other engineers working on the same project. At least for outliers.

Re: We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons

#20

Post by dragontamer »

robbie-c wrote: post #6

I'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 individu…

11 x 17 inch paper is also pretty useful (the next size up from 8.5 x 11 paper).

Unlike a whiteboard, you can prepare 11 x 17 inch paper ahead of time and bring it to a meeting. Including carrying all those random post-it notes in some weird order that you made up.

For you Europeans out there... that'd be roughly A3 sized paper.

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