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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

#151

Post by Uhhrrr »

topspin wrote: post #107
Uhhrrr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My data point is that it sucks, distance learning sucked, and my wife just quit her full time job so we could at least get to your manager's state. None of this bears on whether people should be allowed to work remotely, of course.

So when the parents indulge the escape of "work" because home is a living nightmare what are we left with to raise the kids? Instragram?

Good question! When there is not a pandemic they can go to daycare and play with other kids.

When there is? Well, I am not proud or happy about this, but my kids have very detailed knowledge of and strong opinions about Minecraft.

BTW, home is not really a living nightmare, and kids are wonderful, but they do need human attention.

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

#152

Post by Pet_Ant »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #62
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 t…

It's a soft thing. "I can't, I have to be in the office" gave you an out. I spoke with a coworker who is expected to still make dinner every night because she is home during every day. There are other situations where you don't want some flexibility because it's not an option you want to openly turn down. It's complicated, buh coming into an office gave an equal slate with everyone else there. It gave boundaries for those with trouble establishing their own.

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

#153

Post by WFHRenaissance »

wccrawford wrote: post #117
WFHRenaissance wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To clarify; 20 minute walk, or 5 minutes of waiting for a 10 minute train ride (we don't have reliable signaling in my city, so hard to get to the train JIT).

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

#154

Post by jfrunyon »

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

Absolutely it is.

> how vehemently most developers reject any form of tracking.

Huh? I don't know a single professional developer who doesn't use version control. Usually some sort of bug/todo/issue tracking, as well.

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

#155

Post by luffapi »

PeterisP wrote: post #146
luffapi wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that software is too complex to be created by non-experts. This is why so much of the software ever created is garbage. There is no magic wand or process that will ever turn an average team into a unit that can produce great software. The real answer of course is to pay more to hire better developers. You may even need to pay “hazard pay” if your software is boring enough.

From the perspective of the whole industry there's no such thing as "hire better developers" - if one company does that, then all it means that the "better developer" moves from company A to company B, and an "average developer" moves from company B to company A. It's an almost-zero-sum game - it's an appropriate mechanism to assign better(more expensive) developers to more important jobs and average or weaker develo…

I think we continue doing what we always do: write mountains of terrible code. My argument is that it would be less terrible if you at least put yourself in the mindset of good development, and to me that means not obsessing over “catching someone slacking off”.

I also will believe we have a real developer shortage when dev pay and exec pay are more closely aligned. As it is, I see a lot of room to pull from exec salaries to pay for devs (which would be required if there was a shortage).

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

#156

Post by jfrunyon »

librish wrote: post #72
luffapi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

I think that assumes that you have reasonably self-motivating employees and work that is often interesting which definitely isn't always the case. How do you suggest a non-technical manager tells slacking apart from when things just take unexpectedly longer?

Things don't take unexpectedly longer all the time. No, you can not make this judgement based on a single week, or even a single month. That's true whether the employee is remote or not.

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

#157

Post by mattlondon »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #62
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 t…

> 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.

Depending on age, caring for kids is a full-time job. Perhaps even 1.25-1.5 full time jobs for 12-24 month olds. And even in those blissful moments when you don't need to be doing something specifically to care for them, they are either making noise or your brain is "on call" and splitting it's attention on work-and-watching-out-for-kid. It's hard.

Luckily they sleep outside of work hours so parents can rest or catch up on work.

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

#158

Post by jfrunyon »

librish wrote: post #131
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't tell the difference between a remote employee who is working hard and a remote employee who is slacking... ...is there really a meaningful difference?

Yes. If you could clone the same person working on the same task it would be trivial for anyone to see which one is working hard and which isn't. The problem is that you can't do that so now you're left with having to measure their performance in some other way. That is very hard and noisy.

Why is your idea of an employee's value relative to who that employee is?

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

#159

Post by [deleted] »

librish wrote: post #139
luffapi wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I think you have a very idealized picture of the software industry. There are absolutely cases where more process helps keep things on track and increase overall productivity.

[deleted]

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

#160

Post by jfrunyon »

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…

Try a touchscreen (preferably with marker-like stylus). :)

Of course, "come in for collab meetings once a week" is most certainly an option for teams who really need it.

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