Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.davidtate.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 226 posts

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

#111

Post by maigret »

MattGaiser wrote: post #24
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…

WFH opinion seems to split between people who see work as where you achieve corporate goals for pay and those who see it as a far more encompassing mixture of human experience.

I disagree fully with that statement. It’s completely oversimplifying the reasons to mostly work from home. One might want to spend more time with their loved ones, save money because of commute, might enjoy knowledge seeking and learning by themselves and love long focused work. You can get the human experience in many different ways. For example why meeting the colleagues at the far away office if most of them leave near downtown? You can have retreats and goal oriented team events… there are lots of possible combinations.

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

#112

Post by PeterisP »

luffapi wrote: post #92
librish wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone can afford or attract top level developers. Saying Keep motivation high and keep autonomy high and I assure you software will get produced at a high quality. is handwaving some extremely hard problems, especially if you're not working on an exciting problem and can't afford $200K salaries. You didn't really answer the question. Say I'm a non-technical manager and I suspect one of my employees is slacking…

If you can’t afford to pay for good developers, then you shouldn’t expect good software to be written quickly. That’s something only good developers can accomplish. I think what you want is not possible. More process, monitoring… is only going to slow down your development. I also think if a developer manager is going to be non-technical that they should be able to demonstrate extraordinary developer relation skills.…

If you require good developers and managers with "extraordinary developer relation skills", and do manage to hire them out of wherever they worked before and fire all that don't satisfy that requirement, where do all the average developers and average managers work? Picking out only the best people is something that a particular company can choose to do, but it can't be a recommendation for the whole industry - what do we do with the other half of the tech workforce? We need reasonable processes that work somewhat well for most developers and most managers.

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

#113

Post by vladvasiliu »

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.

There might be something to that, but I think you still have to actually get to the watering hole / square / etc. Many people complain about there being no more boundaries when WFH, working all the time, etc. I think the issue is more psychological than purely logistical.

I live in Paris, where you can easily find a watering hole within walking distance [0], yet I used to hear this same sentiment from colleagues even before Covid was a thing.

At a previous job we used to work a lot from home, which I really enjoyed, and whenever I brought the subject up at the current one, many people would comment something along the lines of "I don't know, I'd hate to be alone all the time". And this was coming from people who seemed fairly sociable and who were often talking about friends outside work (so they weren't isolated).

---

[0] Assuming you live in Paris proper, not in the far-away suburbs.

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

#114

Post by PeterisP »

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…

Delegate. Delegate that supervision of some people to someone else. That's what middle management is for - there's a limit on how many direct reports you can effectively handle; someone does need to "keep mental track of is measuring individual performance and success", but above a certain number (whatever that is for you personally) you can't be that someone for everyone in your company.

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

#115

Post by NikolaNovak »

ryandrake wrote: post #91
NikolaNovak wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I'm a strong introvert (defined here as somebody who likes people but is drained by socialization). Any given day I'd prefer working at home than from office; will prefer lunch at computer than cafeteria; dinner with friends or "me time" over team-building exercise; being at home with family than in office with co-workers. I'm friendly with my co-workers but we're not out-of-office friends -- I have my own ci…

A lot of the calls for returning to office work boil down to people wanting to be in an environment where there's this "hum" of Serious Business™ being done--the "buzz" of people actively present and Doing Interesting Things. It's not the work itself, but excitement at the performance of work going on around them. Lots of work-from-office folks seem to get a charge out of this excitement. Maybe (and I'm half serious)…

I see what you're saying and don't necessarily disagree in general; but it's not, I think, my desire; as I said, on a daily basis, I don't love the "hum & buzz" - I have headphones in my cubicle like many of us here at HN do.

Could an actor become somebody I respect, and effectively portray a worker I know, understand and respect, having a breakthrough or trying something a few times or brainstorming or teaching spontaneously? Dunno. Would they be cheaper than just get somebody to do that AND actual work, I don't think so :D. And in some ways a lot of these things "could" theoretically be done over webex/zoom/teams/whatever. I don't have the answers - only the personal experience that after 16 months alone in my (phenomenal, fun, ergonomic) home office, there's definitely something dulled in my work life/satisfaction/performance, and I've tried to articulate it.

What it comes down to - I'm personally surprised at both extremes: at those who ONLY want to work from office, and those who ONLY want to work from home. Both, for me, would be imperfect compromises in which I'd lose something.

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

#116

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #91
NikolaNovak wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I'm a strong introvert (defined here as somebody who likes people but is drained by socialization). Any given day I'd prefer working at home than from office; will prefer lunch at computer than cafeteria; dinner with friends or "me time" over team-building exercise; being at home with family than in office with co-workers. I'm friendly with my co-workers but we're not out-of-office friends -- I have my own ci…

A lot of the calls for returning to office work boil down to people wanting to be in an environment where there's this "hum" of Serious Business™ being done--the "buzz" of people actively present and Doing Interesting Things. It's not the work itself, but excitement at the performance of work going on around them. Lots of work-from-office folks seem to get a charge out of this excitement. Maybe (and I'm half serious)…

[deleted]

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

#117

Post by wccrawford »

WFHRenaissance wrote: post #105
fosk wrote: post #99

The two fronts of people shouting "Working at home" vs "I want the office" can be almost always summed up by how long the commute is: * Working at home: commute longer than 30-45 minutes. * Working at office: commute shorter than 30-45 minutes. Like everything in life, people optimize for different things in life. Optimizing for a short commute is a choice that people can make if they want, likewise optimizing for a…

I'll be the token "15 minute commuter who doesn't want to go back" person (20 minute walk, 15 minute train). It's not all a function of commute. AMA

That's a 35 minute commute. All the travel time is included, not just the mechanized portion.

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

#118

Post by cratermoon »

I do feel sympathetic to the families with two working parents and kids in school when the Inside Times came upon us.

Some don't have a dedicated office space at all, those that do often don't have it set up for two people to work (dueling Zoom meetings are a problem). Most people in the US can't afford or even get enough bandwidth to support two simultaneous video conferences, much less three or more if there are kids doing remote school.

Don't forget that with parents in the office and kids at school, lunch was pretty easy to take care of if you could afford to eat out, and often dinner would be scattered among friends. Now you've got to figure out food for the whole crowd. Ordering delivery gets expensive.

That's the skeuomorphic way of working from home, of course. While the article is on point, it doesn't offer any suggestions for new ways to work. Where are the Forbes, WSJ, CNBC, Bloomberg, etc articles on embracing remote work?

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

#119

Post by danaris »

fosk wrote: post #99

The two fronts of people shouting "Working at home" vs "I want the office" can be almost always summed up by how long the commute is: * Working at home: commute longer than 30-45 minutes. * Working at office: commute shorter than 30-45 minutes. Like everything in life, people optimize for different things in life. Optimizing for a short commute is a choice that people can make if they want, likewise optimizing for a…

You could just as easily say that the split is

* Working at home: no kids

* Working at office: kids

or

* Working at home: introvert

* Working at office: extravert

There are a lot of reasons to prefer one over the other, and dismissing it as being "obviously" based on one specific factor is unhelpful, and likely to leave you with a skewed view of the situation.

Personally, I live 5 minutes' drive (or 25 minutes' walk) from my office (and on the other two divides, no kids, and distinctly introverted). I love working at home, because it means I get to eat lunch with my family every day, pet my cats when they come over to see me, and take care of random household chores that it's often a bit too much to always cram into the weekend. But I also love that I can go into the office easily any time it's helpful to do so—and I'm expecting to be walking to work again at least a day or two a week this fall.

But while I'm unquestionably part of the tech world, with my everyday work being basically a full stack developer, I'm not "in your highly paid industry", and I think it's a lazy and self-centered shortcut to think of everyone who works in tech—or, worse, everyone who has a choice between working from home or working from the office—as being part of Silicon Valley culture or among the small fraction of Americans lucky enough to be making six figures.

Look outside the techbro culture, look outside the cities, look outside the high-income bubble you're clearly stuck in, and you'll see a lot of people whose life experience and reasons for doing things look very different than what you're used to and expecting.

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

#120

Post by lostcolony »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #58
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 mean, I'm a strong introvert (defined here as somebody who likes people but is drained by socialization). Any given day I'd prefer working at home than from office; will prefer lunch at computer than cafeteria; dinner with friends or "me time" over team-building exercise; being at home with family than in office with co-workers. I'm friendly with my co-workers but we're not out-of-office friends -- I have my own ci…

I agree with you 100%, but want to highlight that this pandemic, and remote work, are entirely different things.

How often do we need people in the office? Some places are looking at hybrid schedules, anywhere from 1-4 days each week in the office, and 4-1 days at home.

Remote offices are rarely fully remote anyway; there's usually stuff like fly in for a week every quarter, or go to a conference or offsite together.

Absolutely, never connecting in person is going to lead to work feeling very separate, and a source of motivation we're used to will be missing. Whether that's a needed or even healthy source of motivation (do I benefit having a personal connection to people at work?) is complicated, but I don't think outside of a pandemic that it's actually -missing-. It just varies how much you'll get.

Post reply on HN