The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices • Hacker News Board

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

#461

Post by asdff » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #303

osigurdson wrote: post #258

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…

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…

Honestly the US commute is not even that bad. Avg transit commute in like Paris is 50 mins. Meanwhile even though Americans have to suffer in traffic or whatever (which imo seems better to have your own personal air conditioned bubble full of music than a cramped sweaty bus), avg commutes even in places like Houston that have the worst traffic out of anywhere are hardly over 30 mins.

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

#462

Post by larrymyers » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

incomingpain wrote: post #391

larrymyers wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, Chicago is not dangerous on a per-capita basis. The news is incentivized to get attention, and "OMG you'll get robbed and shot" is a very effective and crude way to get those clicks.

Chicago is no different than any other large city in that being aware of your surroundings and not doing dumb things is expected.

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

#463

Post by asdff » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

musingsole wrote: post #363

greedo wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullseye. The company I work for has a large home office, plus a satellite office tower in the same city. Plus a satellite office in a second city. So even before COVID, we were working with users remotely. We own all three buildings and land, and have always been proud of that for some reason. Very emotionally invested in the Home office. Obviously COVID changed all that and exposed the opposition to remote work as…

> We own all three buildings and land, and have always been proud of that for some reason Many businesses -- despite whatever their mission statement may be -- are not-so-thinly veiled real estate vehicles. Even businesses with a healthy income from whatever good or service they provide will often have another 25%+ in income from real estate gains. McDonald's is probably a good example of this. I learned this pitchin…

It's hillarious when you get some bullheaded executive who comes into these companies specifically to part out this real estate and raise profits for their tenure before they exit.

For example, a lot of studios in hollywood in recent years have sold their back lots, and are now just leasing them back from some holding company. I'm sure this arrangement made a lot of money for some people, but I imagine in a few decades this will hurt the studios when these land owners start negotiating the next round of leases and realize they have literally all the leverage.

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

#464

Post by jghn » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

brandmeyer wrote: post #416

taylodl wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting - and quite the opposite of what I've personally experienced and heard. Are you saying then that when the lockdown happened and your team was sent home your productivity tanked? What happened? What wasn't it addressed? What's caused your team's productivity to soar now?

We're building a highly specialized product (GNSS Radiooccultation). Its specialized enough that we have to rely on hiring people with generic skills and then developing the specialized skills to work in the domain. In essence, we are relying on internal on-the-job training to build up our team. Remote work failed for us for the same reasons that remote education has been failing everywhere: 1/4 to 1/2 of the job is…

I'm a big fan of hybrid, albeit default remote. But this is one example as to why. For most groups, most of the time remote is fine. There will be circumstances where there's no substitute for in person communication. You cite a great example.

For your situation I would imagine in a hypothetical example where your team composition stays steady for a long period of time you'd find that you required onsite less often. And in that case I'd advocate that defaulting back to remote is a good thing.

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

#465

Post by jghn » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #303

osigurdson wrote: post #258

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…

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

Anecdata but my partner and I have a huge income disparity. I'd say our responsibilities are pretty even. There are things I tend to do and they tend to do. But in my mind at least it evens out.

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

#466

Post by asdff » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

underdeserver wrote: post #259

onion2k wrote: 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…

IMO zoom is plenty good for that. What are you missing that you aren't getting from zooming with someone face to face at this point? I just don't get it. It's way easier to just schedule a zoom meeting and fire off an email with a link and share a screen, than it is for me to haul myself all the way to where someone else is sitting and take turns poking fingers at eachothers laptop screens in an awkward huddle, hoping we don't disturb others.

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

#467

Post by asdff » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

Aicy wrote: post #141

Mc91 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing for me. I go to another city and pay a visit for a week, but say I need to be available on Teams from 9 to 5 and attend some meetings, and get some work done. Usually it slows me down a little, so I do some extra prep work before the visit and catch up when I return home. It's like a little vacation without taking time off.

What do you do on your city visits? I would like to do that but everything I like to do is only open during the day, and where I live by 5pm when I finish work it's dark and cold

You can change time zones too. I went skiing recently and ran into some people who wfh in the east coast. They were living right in breckenridge for the season, working in the mornings, then by quitting time east coast time hit they still had a few hours every single day to go out and ski in mountain time.

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

#468

Post by asdff » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #21

themadturk wrote: post #7

Our return to the office has been back and forth for various reasons, but the ultimate goal is that everyone work in the office every day. But in an effort to make commuting easier, we are opening satellite offices in the metropolitan area...which (when all satellites are open) scatters teams between up to four offices. So nearly all of our meetings will be via Zoom, even if team members are "in the office." I don't…

The problem with Zoom calls in the office is that you usually do them at your desk rather than in a meeting room, and when you do that, you are totally destroying the productivity of anyone who happens to be in the room with you. Not to mention what happens if several people in the same room have different calls at the same time...

Its even worse when you have a zoom call with some people in a meeting room on one line, and other people connecting on another line. The people in the meeting room basically have their own discussions since the people on zoom can't get too many words in due to being talked over. Then usually the audio or video is terrible in the meeting room and if you are on the zoom call you can only hear who is standing closest to the AV equipment.

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

#469

Post by 1270018080 » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 6:20 PM UTC

buzzdenver wrote: post #323

bearjaws wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was appalled to find our office lease was $20,000 a month. We could hire two FTEs for the price of that office, and we are not even in a premium space. To your point about efficiency: I don't believe our office produces 2 FTE's worth of additional productivity across the whole org. Leadership thinks it does, but assuming we acquire decent talent, that would be a net 10% increase in engineering. I don't believe the…

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

He isn't making an assumption that everybody in the office prefers working from home. Where did you read that?

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

#470

Post by higeorge13 » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 6:20 PM UTC

spaniard89277 wrote: post #170

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask how are you dealing with taxes, working for a US company in Spain? Are you contracting your SWE services and billing them? Or are you an employee of the US company?

Check remote.com or similar solutions. They have a few competitors, but for 200$ you become a full employee in your country of residence.

In some countries working as full time employee via remote.com etc. gets you less money than having a company and dealing with the taxes.