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The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

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Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How long until climate change or expensive gasoline forces people to just stay home?? Yes, this is just the beginning of the end. I would even say this is the beginning of the end for cities as we know them. I think 80-90% of all white collar jobs will leave cities and suburbia. This will really change the dynamics.

I expect that opposite will happen. Cities that are built for people (and not cars) will thrive. Nobody wants to drive everywhere. Cities that support multi-modal transportation and have mixed residential / commercial centers will thrive. Chicago does this well. From my front door I have the follow options: * The El (train, local stops) * Metra (train, commuter that gets out to the burbs) * Bus * Taxi * Divvy (e-bike…

Kind of offtopic, but how about safety consideration? Chicago is represented as quite dangerous in the media.

As a resident, is the danger true?

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#392
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My cynical view is that some older executives are, indeed, not as effective in remote companies and younger ones At the beginning of the pandemic, all our "boomer" leadership couldn't even properly share their screen on zoom. We then switched to Teams, and they couldn't figure that out either. I actually in a one on one suggested all of senior leadership should take a class on remote work, and Teams, because 90% of…

Two years into the pandemic, we still have executives who can't be bothered to learn something as simple as how to mute their microphones during a Teams meeting. I think it's a subconscious reaction to the idea of them being muted. In a normal meeting, no one would ever think to mute them since they're so high on the food chain.

I think there's a deeper, wider systemic issue here.

People think they'll get better at remote working by a) being bad at it, b) putting no effort into getting better at it and c) doing it a lot.

...and in some ways it makes sense. Surely, if you do something for long enough, you'll get better at it right?

The reality is, though, I guess, that in most domains, if you don't make an effort to get better, then the ceiling for the skill level you can acquire by just repeating the same mistakes over and over is pretty low.

It's like having a soccer match every day and never putting any practice in between.

You get a lot of experience playing, and you'll get better, a bit, slowly... but at the end of the day, two years later you're still basically rubbish at it and a let down to your team.

That's the problem I see: People not actually believing that they have to put effort in to get better at working remotely...but, I don't think it's fair to say they can't be bothered.

A lot of people are trying really hard to Make Things Work... they're just doing it wrong, because they don't think that they need to actually learn new skills.

That's different to being lazy.

Perhaps its particularly pronounced in people who aren't accustomed to taking feedback; but it happens in all kinds of teams at all kinds of levels.

Work in a hybrid team where you have to meet up physically to do 'difficult' meetings where more than 3 people have to talk? Have a team that doesn't really talk to each other outside of standup? Got an agile coach who can't share their screen? Have big online meetings where no one turns on their cameras and only one or two people actually speak?

Yeah. I mean, I've had all those things on and off in the last two years. It's a bit of a joke really.

It's not just execs who struggle with remote working. They're just easy targets, because they're especially bad at it.

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#393

I don't think there is anything else more illogical in modern society than waking up in building A, hopping in a car and fighting traffic for an hour to get to building B just to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours (perhaps with a few minimally productive meetings here and there), then commute back to building A 8 hours later. Building B sits empty for 16 hours a day while Building A sits empty for 10 with both be…

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Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#394
post #211
post #75

Employees need to be on site, we’re told, because collaborating with one another has been harder to do when everyone is working from separate locations. I think this is true, but only if the main part of your job is collaborating eg talking to other people to reach a consensus. That is easier face to face. The problem is that only higher up management roles are actually like that. Lower down the tree people are expec…

Lower down the tree people want to get promotions and that transition won’t happen abruptly but gradually. I agree with the overall sentiment, though. My experience is 80% of time in office on zoom or hybrid zoom/in person meetings, which does make it purely only worth it for the 20% impromptu discussions. The result is even worse exhaustion not only from commute but also from completely drowning the schedule to mana…

I would be making 1/4 of my current salary if I didn't work in a place were impromptu discussions could happen.

If my job was WFH (its not and can't be), I would still probably be doing the same stupid entry level shit with mediocre raises. Thanks to impromptu/casual conversation though, I got pulled out from under my manager and moved to a much higher position in another department (this was over a year or so, not just a one off conversation)

I could interact with higherups without being viewed as "going over my bosses head", and to me that's insanely valuable.

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the assumption that everybody in the office prefers working from home.

They didn't say anything about preference, they merely said output. Does people preferring to work from the office mean they are so much more productive so as to make up that cost? That's the question that we're faced with, and if the last few years are any indication, the answer seems to be "No".

This is definitely not universal. Our team switched to a soft hybrid model whereby we almost always work from the office, but use WFH for deliveries, snow days, kid sick days, etc. We did that as soon as the vaccine became widely available and it completely turbocharged our productivity. We delivered more in the first three months after coming back than the preceding year of fully-remote work.

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#397
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not so easy. Changing jobs cannot be always the answer. In Europe there are not many "remote friendly" companies and also it's not that you will get a 20% pay rise every time you switch. On top, it is extremely hard to find software development jobs that pay around or above 100K. Most jobs are around 60-80K. A job change can also mean - inheriting someone else's problematic code base, new office politics and co…

> In Europe there are not many "remote friendly" companies This is not true. There are many such opportunities if you ask, especially now. > it's not that you will get a 20% pay rise every time you switch If you work in IT (generous, but it is HN...), this should be your experience unless you switch more than once every two years. Then everyone will mistrust you, but you can still do it as a contractor. > On top, it…

> such numbers mostly make sense in the US because it is (socially, in terms of security) a desert hellscape.

Tough but fair.

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Basically the point is that many people find meaning and purpose in their jobs, if you remove the "purpose" (getting dressed, going out, meeting other people, sharing work experiences with them) it simply becomes a tedious activity to them that fulfills none of their needs. If the only purpose you have in a job is to put on uncomfortable clothes and socialize I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.

> If the only purpose you have in a job is to put on uncomfortable clothes and socialize I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job. if you remove the human aspect and insist on framing the issue like that, can't we say the same thing for almost any job? - If the only purpose you have in a job is to boost your ego and brag I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job. - If the only purpose you have in a job is…

>if you remove the human aspect and insist on framing the issue like that, can't we say the same thing for almost any job?

- If the only purpose you have in a job is to boost your ego and brag I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.

- If the only purpose you have in a job is to chose the colors in an excel spreadsheet cells I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.

- If the only purpose you have in a job is to do something a machine can do better I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.

- If the only purpose you have in a job is to farm kind animals to later cruelly kill them I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.

- If the only purpose you have in a job is to make money for yourself I think we can go ahead and eliminate that job.

Well... yes, we should. The last one is obviously unreasonable since we live in a society where money is required to live most lifestyles. I recommend reading Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber: https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp...

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#399
post #75

Employees need to be on site, we’re told, because collaborating with one another has been harder to do when everyone is working from separate locations. I think this is true, but only if the main part of your job is collaborating eg talking to other people to reach a consensus. That is easier face to face. The problem is that only higher up management roles are actually like that. Lower down the tree people are expec…

I strongly disagree. I find that talking to other people is required at every single level. Junior engineers need mentoring, need to talk to other people to understand what's asked of them. Mid-level engineers/ICs need to talk to other people to understand the architecture design, collaborate with other mid-level engineers, and push back or report back issues that arise during the work. Seniors and up need it for des…

I fully agree that conversations are necessary to advancing a career, technical or otherwise. But I believe these technical conversations translate online pretty well, and have pre-pandemic too (eg successful FOSS that's all coordinated remotely, like Linux). That's not the case for the more management-centric decisions. If you're discussing other people (both in an HR sense and in a process design sense) body language and other non-verbal cues are much more important.

I've found these technical discussions, pair-programming, mentoring, architectural consensus building, are all much easier to do "remotely" than typical management-style discussions. Our project's technical team size fits into the "two pizza" rule, although just barely probably, so it's not like we're super tiny.

Pair-programming is great online. Better than in-person in my experience. Simply share your screen, and I can put it up on my second monitor. We've successfully mentored numerous junior-ish devs during COVID, with heavy use of remote pair-programming.

Architecture type discussions main drawback is missing a whiteboard, but there are a plethora of online tools of varying quality. In practice we often use draw.io and show a bit more finished copies than pure whiteboarding, but we've used other more simpler solutions for whiteboarding here too.

Design discussions/architectural consensus take place fine online, we just haven't had any issues. Just like pair-programming or architecture, we might screenshare but mostly we talk. And we find we don't lose anything from this. Sure, you don't get body-language, but that isn't needed for discussing bearer tokens.

In summary, while I agree that technical discussion is necessary at all stages, I believe that technical discussions is far less negatively impacted by remote when compared to non-technical discussions (i.e. managerial).

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's also a cultural thing. US commute is particularly bad, I work from home and been doing it on and off for the past 20 years. My commute has never been longer than 20 minutes total. I now live 5 minutes walk away from my office, I'm not going, but if I had to I would walk there and have a very nice breakfast in some bar on the road there. One thing that's always overlooked is how much WFH is selecting people who a…

> Also WFH tends to discriminate people doing "less important" jobs, You are mixing pandemic with WFH. When you work, you still need childcare and otherwise be working. Doing chores and house work during breaks is a nice “perk” that saves me time, but it must not come at the expense of the work itself, just like it would not with WFO. If anything, WFH has been more inclusive as many other comments have said, especial…

> You are mixing pandemic with WFH

No, I am not.

> oing chores and house work during breaks is a nice “perk” that saves me time, but it must not come at the expense of the work itself, just like it would not with WFO

If people are home, they can be pressured to do more, because they literally have more time to do them and are literally physically available for exploitation.

Simple as that.

> If anything, WFH has been more inclusive as many other comments have said

You are mixing self segregation with inclusiveness.

> Video conf chat has become a valuable and documentable discussion medium that can include

Only if you sell video chat software.

Least path of resistance states that video chats pose less barriers, so you're making more of them and they end up lasting longer than before.

It also enables more monitoring from management and the idea that workers are always available. (guess who's not saying no to the boss? the more vulnerable or the less vulnerable?)

Again: it's been observed.

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