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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

#181

Post by kelnos »

Grimm1 wrote: post #74
ecf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For what it's worth, without the word option being emphasized here, yours is an equally selfish desire because it brings harm to that person or group of people who prefer the office experience. I liked working in an office, sorry you don't.

No, it doesn't. People who want to work in an office -- or in any kind of shared space -- can do so. Maybe that space is provided by your employer as a traditional office. Maybe your employer can rent some space a WeWork-type thing.

Your argument also rests on the premise that the people who have been forced to come into an office every day should continue to be forced to do that, because some other group wants that situation. The idea that that's an ok situation to begin with is just bonkers. If you can't have your communal office experience without harming others, then you should not get your communal office experience. (But you can have that! No one is saying you can't!)

The idea that a group of people wanting to work from home is somehow "harming" people who want to work at an office is ludicrous.

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

#182

Post by warkdarrior »

imbnwa wrote: post #100
minikites wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Measuring this stuff is really, really hard. If you're a manager who's non-technical it's almost impossible. The job of a manager is supposed to be hard, that's why it pays well. If you want an easy job, do something else.

Insane that developers interview for their jobs daily, usually first thing in the morning, but management can be as inept as it wishes

This comment only shows that you have no idea what a manager does or that they are responsible to their bosses as well.

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

#183

Post by kelnos »

closeparen wrote: post #171
ecf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 would be open to a remote working arrangement that was truly asocial. The problem is you still want all the normal social features of working relationships - meetings, collaboration, mentorship, collective commitment and sacrifice towards a shared vision - in a remote context. The imitation of a team over Zoom carries, for me, all of the costs (higher costs, even) but none of the benefits. Empty calories. From my e…

> From my end it's you, prospective remote colleague, selfishly offering a raw deal.

This just strikes me as not at all the same thing.

People wanting to work from home does not remove the world of office work from your list of options. Depending on how extreme your particular company wants to go with remote work, yes, that might mean you'll have to find a different job to get the office experience. But that's the breaks.

I think it's the height of selfishness to require that your colleagues continue to waste hours of their lives on a commute daily and deal with inflexible office working arrangements just so you can get the "working relationships" experience that you want.

Your side seems to want the status quo, and our side seems to just want more flexibility, flexibility that doesn't preclude office work, at least some of the time. Seems obvious to me here who is being selfish and unreasonable.

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

#184

Post by kelnos »

grillvogel wrote: post #175
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.

it wasn't nuclear families hunting together, it was all the warriors/hunters of the tribe or whatever. that was "going to the office" for them. i wonder how those who wanted to "hunt remotely" would fare in that environment?

That's one hell of a false equivalence.

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

#185

Post by kelnos »

grillvogel wrote: post #85
ecf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

humans collaborating together, in person, to work on a common goal, has been a thing since humans existed. everyone working individually at home by themselves, only interacting with others digitally is pretty far removed from that. i might go so far as to suggest preferring the latter is what is not normal. having distracting kids at home is not an "undesirable home situation", in fact its a great home sitaution, so…

> the fact that so many are happy being isolated at home with no real interactions with any peers is concerning in itself.

That seems to be a huge straw man. "Interactions with peers" doesn't have to mean "going into an office for 8 hours, 5 days a week". I know plenty of (pre-pandemic) fully-remote people who get tons of interactions with their colleagues. And I know others who, yes, do want to keep that interaction to the minimum necessary to get their jobs done. Both of those situations are fine.

Work is not the be-all, end-all of existence. While I have made many good friends through work, and some (though not most) have made the transition to non-work friends (the true friendship-type test is when one party in the work friendship leaves the company), I have very little need or desire to socialize at the workplace these days. I get plenty of interaction outside of work, and that's how I like it. I certainly recognize that others want more interaction through their work, and that's fine. But you don't need to drag me into that to get it.

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

#186

Post by kelnos »

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?

This is likely to be an unpopular opinion, but perhaps people who feel that way about their kids shouldn't have them in the first place.

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

#187

Post by kelnos »

closeparen wrote: post #178
drewcoo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know but I think we need a "scared sterile" program for the kids (similar to "scared straight"). I didn't realize there were so many reluctant parents until COVID. I feel society has coerced people into lives so unhappy that they'd rather spend time at the place everyone else is trying to escape than with their loved ones.

Spreading child-supervision duties around the extended family and community so parents can do other things besides be with their children 24x7 has been a feature of many human cultures for many thousands of years.

Right, but the times they are a'changin', and many people don't live within reasonable distance of extended family anymore.

We can throw up our hands and either say a) stop moving away from your extended family, b) deal with the struggle, or c) don't have kids. Or we can use our big brains and try to figure out a better way for everyone to live where/how they want, but also be able to raise kids in a loving, supportive environment where the parents can still get a break sometimes.

I don't know what that better way is, but I think it's pretty fatalistic and defeatist to assume it doesn't exist.

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

#188

Post by kelnos »

tablespoonsruby wrote: post #21
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…

In the same way that most people don't want to pair program full time, but it's perfectly legitimate for a company to decide it wants to be a full-time pairing shop if they think it's important enough to limit their hiring pool to people who want to pair program, it's perfectly legitimate for a company to decide it does not want to be remote.

The problem is, as usual, one of power imbalance. Employers -- especially those in industries where unions and collective bargaining is unusual -- tend to have a lot more power in the relationship than their employees do, so they get to dictate terms, at least up until the point that labor willing to accept those terms becomes scarce.

I think we can agree that if every software company decided that they were going to be a full-time pairing shop, that'd be a bad thing. In the same way, I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch to also suggest that it'd be bad if all employers decided that their workers had to be butts-in-seats 40 hours (or more) per week, no exceptions.

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

#189

Post by kelnos »

duxup wrote: post #64
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.

The thing that's bothering me about this argument (and many like it) is that it assumes that we're calling for a complete end to office life. We're not. We just want more flexibility, and many of us would still like to come into an office once, twice, thrice, or even four times a week. And even for those of us (like myself) who would rather not go to an office at all, we don't have a problem with people who do want to spend time in an office. There's nothing stopping companies from offering office space to employees who want it. We just don't want it to be required of everyone, as it so often was pre-pandemic.

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

#190

Post by andrewflnr »

jfrunyon wrote: post #148
aisle wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And intentional about exercising (as opposed to walking to BART or even directly to work for 20 mins), and intentional about eating right (instead of hopping over to Mixt Greens for a complex and healthy salad). And intentional about their work area actually being healthy (adequate sun exposure, free of radon in the case of a basement office). On and on and on. There is no way to guarantee all of this stuff for remot…

Most Americans drive to work. Most people will eat better at home (with plenty of their own groceries to cook) rather than at work (where they either have to prep ahead of time, or eat out). And I've literally never seen a single room in a house with less lighting than any of the offices I have ever worked in. And if people want to work in an office... let them? I'm not sure why everyone hears remote work and thinks…

Well, there's some merit to that last objection. Hybrid remote/local workplaces have a pretty poor track record w.r.t. making sure the remote portion has equal participation, opportunities, etc. IMO that will be the real challenge.
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