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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

#61

Post by void_mint »

ryandrake wrote: post #56
void_mint wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think the above comment's thinking is pretty unproductive. If you "just" skip all of the meetings you don't personally find value in, you're depriving everyone in those meetings any nuggets of value _you_ could add. You'll be quickly labeled a loner/difficult team member/etc. Nobody wins if you "just" skip all the things you don't want to do. Also it's worth noting that the gripe wasn't about meetings, but ab…

> Yeah, I think the above comment's thinking is pretty unproductive. If you "just" skip all of the meetings you don't personally find value in, you're depriving everyone in those meetings any nuggets of value _you_ could add. I was specifically talking about the meetings OP was talking about: The ones that have no value-add and where you have no nuggets to add. You can sleep through them, or otherwise tune out and do…

I downvoted more for the massive condescension than anything else.

edit

To answer your edit: Most (all?) companies would fire an employee that refuses to comply with required company activities (meetings as an excellent example). I don't really think it's petty for a company to not allow every individual employee to decide what required team meetings are right for that individual.

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

#62

Post by xboxnolifes »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #26

> You might also want to learn how to handle your kids while working from home. Work was a respite from home. Then came WFH and remote-learning. "Just figure things out" smacks of privilege. For starters, (almost) no one plans to be a single parent.

I can sympathize with WFH with kids being challenging and even needing a change in norms if it continues, but I'm not sure how it quite applies to single parents in this context. If the single parent is working in an office, then they would need to figure out daycare for their children. If they WFH, they could still use the same daycare, or even save the money of daycare if they take on the burden of taking care of the children at home while working.

Unless there was an underlying assumption that the office provided daycare that I missed. Or if this was more toward remote learning than remote work.

Also, If the child is old enough to care for themselves at home, I don't see the issue of being in or out of office.

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

#63

Post by mattbk1 »

ecf wrote: post #55
lastofthemojito wrote: post #12

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…

On the contrary, I feel it deserves LESS respect. Treating the office as an escape from an undesirable at-home situation and then having the audacity to try to force more people to be in-person is incredibly selfish behavior. If these people truly need that social interaction, how about putting more effort into community/personal relationships instead of workplace relationships?

I think the word "option" probably needs to be emphasized more here. My workplace is moving toward hybrid, which allows this option. > 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

#64

Post by duxup »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #12

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…

Buddy of mine works from home, he hates it because he has a studio apartment and wants to get out of that one room.

I'm pretty sympathetic as not everyone's home is handy to work from. Folks with fewer means have smaller homes / fewer resources there.

I can afford to outfit a big space, folks with smaller homes / different situations very much can't.

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

#65

Post by alextheparrot »

ecf wrote: post #55
lastofthemojito wrote: post #12

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…

On the contrary, I feel it deserves LESS respect. Treating the office as an escape from an undesirable at-home situation and then having the audacity to try to force more people to be in-person is incredibly selfish behavior. If these people truly need that social interaction, how about putting more effort into community/personal relationships instead of workplace relationships?

We should respect honesty more. At least then we can talk about the real issues, like maybe finding relationships in a non-work context.

We can call this person selfish and attend to the root malice only because they were honest. If they just contrived a reason to further their goal state, then they are being both duplicitous and selfish, which seems to be something we should respect less?

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

#66

Post by luffapi »

librish wrote: post #53

"I can't let me team work from home, they might not work hard." "Maybe you should work to improve what you measure and how you encourage feedback. It is normally a good idea to have ways to tell if people are doing a good job for what you are paying them to do." Measuring this stuff is really, really hard. If you're a manager who's non-technical it's almost impossible. No-one is saying that you can't slack off while…

> Sure, you can take the position that it's managements responsibility to figure this out and fire you but understand that this type of thing is why many companies are against remote, especially with how vehemently most developers reject any form of tracking.

The position to take that leads not just to a successful wfh environment, but a great work environment in general is to not worry about “slacking off”. People are either producing results, or not. Especially in software development, developers will have spurts of great productivity and plenty of downtime. Trust, freedom and positive motivation are the keys to success.

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

#67

Post by topspin »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #12

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…

You quoted part of that without comment on something I think is crucial:

    "My kids are driving me crazy."
I've seen that in practice. Long ago I watched a manager of mine on a lengthy call with his wife discussing the absolute chaos going on at home with the kids, the school, etc. When he hung up he said the most sincere thing I ever heard from him; "Thank God for work."

And he had a wife at home to referee it all. If one then asks what might the conditions of a household be where she works as well... Yeah. That explains a lot.

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

#68

Post by throwaway284534 »

dvt wrote: post #11

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 pres…

You’re right on just about everything, especially the external pressures that come with a fancy office.

After 10 years of writing software, I’ve realized that being in an office is the opposite of productive when it comes to coding. The office is where your more career driven peers climb the hierarchy through soft skills, currying favors with each meeting and business lunch.

This might sound a little like a brag but I was pretty good at playing that game. Doing it remotely is a bit harder, but it’s possible if you’re especially power hungry. Honestly though, it was stressful and not even all that fulfilling after rising up to engineering manager.

Just getting to write code without bad managers who negatively affect my mood is all I’ve ever wanted, and I think there’s a lot of folks on this site that feel the same way.

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

#69

Post by grawprog »

luckydata wrote: post #54
lastofthemojito wrote: post #12

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…

yes, but kids are going back to school. The "i'm lonely" part is an effect of how bad US cities are for social interaction. I guarantee you if you live in a European city you're not starved for social interaction, you can go to your neighborhood watering hole, or square, and meet with your actual friends anytime.

I have to ask, how realistic has it been to do such things in most places over the last year? I mean WFH or not, most places, governments have not allowed people to do any of those things for the better part of a year.

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

#70

Post by pklausler »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #12

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…

I love working from home... except when I really need to hash out an idea with smart colleagues in front of a whiteboard. I've gotten a lot more "done" over the past 14 months, I think, but I don't think that everything has been as well thought through as it would previously have been.
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