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

161–170 of 226 posts

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

#161

Post by jfrunyon »

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…

> Optimizing for a short commute is a choice that people can make if they want

Uh, no. I can't afford to pay twice the rent I do so that I can cut my commute in half.

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

#162

Post by sfink »

void_mint wrote: post #41
ssully wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the old adage that showing up is half the battle. Even if the company isn't in the habit of misusing meetings, showing up to meetings is important for establishing relationships with different people and departments. It sucks, but people are still social creatures, and meeting and talking to people face to face can have a strong lasting impression then a well written email.

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…

Right. You shouldn't "just" skip those meetings. You should skip those meetings.

As in, you should communicate with the organizer and give your reason for the meeting not being a good use of your time -- or rather, not a good use of the company's money that is paying for your time to be in the meeting rather than doing something else.

If the meeting really is overly broad, then the organizer probably won't really care; they invited everyone who they thought might need to be involved, and from their standpoint it's better to overinvite than underinvite. If you point out that you're extra, then you're taking the potential work to figure that out off of their hands.

In the best case, they'll reconsider the invite list and/or scope of the meeting. In the worst case, they'll fire you. In which case there's a decent chance that it was actually the best case, but you couldn't recognize it at the time.

But I suspect that it's a lot more common for the outcome to be "uh, ok, thanks for letting me know."

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

#163

Post by MattGaiser »

saiojd wrote: post #89
MattGaiser wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your description summarizes what I've been trying to express so concisely – it's almost shocking. I'm left wondering on what side of the split you stand on.

I mostly care about the corporate goals.

I have far less of a normal life than most people and am far more obsessive about the kinds of things I do spend my time on than most people, so I don't personally bond that easily nor enjoy the casual moments or marshmallow and spaghetti tower building.

I enjoy objectives and racing towards them.

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

#164

Post by void_mint »

sfink wrote: post #162
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…

Right. You shouldn't "just" skip those meetings. You should skip those meetings. As in, you should communicate with the organizer and give your reason for the meeting not being a good use of your time -- or rather, not a good use of the company's money that is paying for your time to be in the meeting rather than doing something else. If the meeting really is overly broad, then the organizer probably won't really car…

I would argue what you're describing isn't "skipping" a meeting, but communicating about process and changing required attendees to optional, which is very much not what was being prescribed above ("Just hit decline like a grown up").

What you're describing is fine, but also not what we're talking about.

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

#165

Post by throwaway894345 »

cratermoon wrote: post #145
throwaway894345 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans collaborating together, in person, to work on a common goal, has been a thing since humans existed. It was a very, very rare thing for most people for all of human history until the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, a lot of people helped build StoneHenge and the Pyramids, but most people were just farming (at home) or else hunting/gathering in family units.

For how pre-industrial farmers worked, look to the Old Order Amish. They are not isolated family units, the community is the bedrock. The oldest settlements found suggest group cooperation was essential in the development of hominids.

To be clear, there's no discrepancy between "the larger community was essential" and "daily life revolved around the homestead and kinfolk groups". The former doesn't refute the latter. Indeed, I grew up amid the Amish, and both were true: their daily work was on their own farm or else they were helping their kin farm and their communities were very important to them. I suspect that's also the case with the other hominids you're referencing.

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

#166

Post by librish »

jfrunyon wrote: post #156
librish wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree completely and that's my point. Evaluation is hard.

Separately from that, many people believe having people be in office leads to a higher chance of them doing work because the alternatives are much less enticing.

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

#167

Post by librish »

jfrunyon wrote: post #158
librish wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Mainly that people are good at different things so I wouldn't want to compare two people on only one task. I don't really see how that interjection is particularly relevant for the point I'm making though.

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

#168

Post by ladyattis »

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 tend to be in the same boat wrt WFH. I like it for being out 2 or 3 days in the week but any more it just turns me batty and I'm mostly reclusive.

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

#169

Post by Diederich »

ajuc wrote: post #38
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…

I started to draw in ms paint during meetings and got pretty good in it last year :)

Care to share your best couple of drawings? (:

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

#170

Post by derekp7 »

danaris wrote: post #143
derekp7 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just looked at Rotary Club dues, $36 for 6 months (6 bucks a month). Doesn't seem too bad. For interest-based groups, I'm constantly seeing large bicycle groups cruising around, so such groups do exist (at least that is one that is openly visible). I periodically will jump in on Linux user group (or similar) meetings in my area too. But they typically have about half a dozen people that show up. I know that hackers…

That's definitely much lower than I remember it being back when I looked. (Which doesn't necessarily mean that it is lower—it's not something I took special note of.) Still, for me, not something I think it worth my time & money to do, but not nearly as much of a pinch as I was thinking for someone that does actually like that sort of thing.

I can definitely get on board with that sentiment. A number of years ago I was all set to join a Hackerspace in my area, but for two things. One was the monthly dues, $50 a month. I was already budgeting out to the last dollar of income, so that wouldn't have worked. Second was the commute into the city to make use of it. If I worked / lived in the city it would be a bit different, but just as there was the issue of budgeting money I had just as much of a problem budgeting time for it. It really does seem to me like we have less time available then what I recall my parent's generation having (for example my Dad always worked on family cars despite working a factory job with a 60 minute daily commute). And they still had time to watch 2 - 3 hours of TV in the evenings.

Edit: I just looked again, that is the dues that the central organization charges each chapter for chapter members. The individual chapter dues may be much higher, and probably varies depending on location.

Post reply on HN