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The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
111–120 of 216 posts
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get that some people love their offices and think they are amazing work environments, but when I probe, it always seems to boil down to emotional attachment. A lifestyle choice. Offices usually don't actually improve productivity, IMO.
That’s probably true in many, or even most cases. Even so, what do you think about the example of the formerly successful company that now can’t retain engineers? Even if the benefits were entirely intangible, this still ultimately has had an effect on productivity, right? Intangible benefits are… benefits! I think the benefits were quite tangible in this case; I can elaborate as much as I can while maintaining my an…
Some people need the office. Some companies run on it. I don't care for it. Maybe we could all just leave each other alone.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The key thing is here: > > over the first six months of 2020 This also implies that most of the employees already knew each other and worked together before being forced into remote work. One of the biggest problems with switching to remote work is that people carry over the in-person relationships they were already comfortable with. It's the new hires who suffer most, in my experience. When everyone else has month…
So true. I’ve personally experienced this with starting a new job in January 2020 and subsequently working on 3 teams. Team 1: 3 engineers of various tenure already on the team. Built good relationship with 2 before pandemic put us in WFH about 6 weeks in. I still talk to both of these engineers on a regular basis, even though we no longer work together. Team 2: Changed about 8 months in due to a reorg. Working with…
As someone who manages people for a living, the problems on Team 2 were entirely your manager’s fault.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s a very Silicon Valley tech influenced meme.
I don't believe so. It's the only way to get a proper pay increase in corporate America. Internal promotion in most corporations comes with at best a 10% pay increase most of the time and includes increased workload. If I leave my company and go to another I can pretty easily get 15-20% increase and stay in the same basic job I'm currently at. Most companies don't offer any benefits that increase based on loyalty so…
Outside of startups, most of which fail anyway, I think you’ll find a lot more stay in the 5-10+ year range than you give credit for. Certainly 20+ is unusual these days. I’ve had multiple 10ish year jobs and don’t expect to hit that number.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
It kind of depends on the details. My company has offices that you can go to, but if you want to work remotely then it’s up to you to manage your environment. The company already has offices. Why would they pay for more just because you don’t want to go to the offices. There is a one time budget for hardware, such as a second monitor at home, we’ll have to see how that plays out with upgrades in a few years.
Because they don't have to pay for those offices anymore. If the company is allowing for remote work, they can also downsize those offices (subject to lease conditions), saving piles of money. (Commerical space is expensive!) If some of those savings aren't passed onto their employees, those employees will choose to move to a different company that has a more general WFH allowance, probably get a raise in the process…
Once you factor in long contracts, the people who are desperate to go back to the office, and greater space requirements for proper social distancing - they pretty much do need to pay for those existing offices. Hopefully things will re-equilibriate, but I'd guess that will take another 2 years at least.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
They should do a follow up study on how many people will die from Covid by working in the office. I rather wonder how preventable deaths impact innovation in teams. From Israel we can see that that death rate per million with 90%+ of adults double vaccinated is ~4 per day. In the US that works out to ~1300 deaths a day. This is the new normal until everyone susceptible dies. The office doesn't sound so good when it's…
Anecdotally I've seen reports of people getting Covid more than once. So even the assumption that if Delta runs rampant through the unvaccinated population at least we'll gain full herd immunity that way is perhaps not true. Plus you always have people too young to be vaccinated or immunocompromised that will be a reservoir. I'm not an epidemiologist and claim no expertise but it certainly appears we may always have…
Nature is correcting for our artificially enhanced lifespans thanks to modern medicine.
Life, uh, finds a way.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#117One thing about slack- and zoom-based remote working I've noticed is that there's less room to be your "informal self". Meetings require more coordination since only one person can speak at a time and there are fewer non-verbal cues to communicate which topics are resonating with you. You also can't continue smaller conversations with people after a meeting. Everything is more formalized. Likewise, conversations outs…
I really feel this. I've been working remotely for a few years, and will probably continue doing so for the foreseeable future, but there is no such thing as informal conversation in that setting.
My company encourages everybody to set up "salon" meetings with random people to just chat, but these conversations end up being awkward and forced (though that could just be me).
The result of this is that I feel completely disconnected from my co-workers and my company. I have plenty of other things going on in my life, so that doesn't bother me too much, but it's certainly not ideal.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the hardest thing remote work has to replicate is just random small talk between smart people that can lead to great ideas. This speech from Richard Hamming about Bell Labs sticks in my mind, especially the segment about open vs closed office doors. I'd say remote work is objectively better for pure productivity in terms of getting things done, but you run the risk of limiting innovation I think https://www.c…
>random small talk between smart people that can lead to great ideas. Outside of maybe a very innovative R&D department I don't really see these "brilliant ideas that only smalltalk could achieve" in your typical run of the mill company.
I think it can be similar to having your company support slack channel open.. not necessarily subscribed but seeing the issues that customers come to your support staff with… that can provide surprising clarity… maybe product owners should be focused on that sort of thing and maybe this highlights issues with where I am…
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#119The key thing is here: > over the first six months of 2020 Those first six months were pretty rough. The large majority of people had little to no experience working remotely, so many folks didn't have a good home office environment, and there was a general sense of being unsure if this would just be temporary or if employees should settle in for the long haul. Many orgs didn't have good practices set up for remote w…
>say what you want about MS Teams, but they improved their product by leaps and bounds over the pandemic, much of which after the first 6 months Did they? I've been using it at my company for years, since long before the pandemic, and I don't think I've seen any improvements since the first day I started using it until now. Every issue I have with it has gone unchanged. The only change I can think of is when they add…
> I don't think I've seen any improvements since the first day I started using it
At some point they hid the new topic/thread input behind a button, and that really improved my life, since people stopped creating new threads when responding to other ones.
The discoverability in teams is horrible though. And something about it makes everyone want to create a new team for every thing.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#120The key thing is here: > over the first six months of 2020 Those first six months were pretty rough. The large majority of people had little to no experience working remotely, so many folks didn't have a good home office environment, and there was a general sense of being unsure if this would just be temporary or if employees should settle in for the long haul. Many orgs didn't have good practices set up for remote w…
I think the hardest thing remote work has to replicate is just random small talk between smart people that can lead to great ideas. This speech from Richard Hamming about Bell Labs sticks in my mind, especially the segment about open vs closed office doors. I'd say remote work is objectively better for pure productivity in terms of getting things done, but you run the risk of limiting innovation I think https://www.c…
Maybe if Microsoft would make an MS teams feature that would operate more like discord then that random smalltalk would happen.