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Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

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Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#231

Post by acuozzo »

dleslie wrote: post #189
acuozzo wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… or the sort of people with young kids.

I've raised two kids from birth to elementary while working from home, as the parent who did the sick care, before and after school care, and so forth. I'll take their company over that of an office any time. At least my kids respect me enough not to interrupt be when I've got headphones on and am working; something I can't say for any office I've ever worked in.

> At least my kids respect me enough not to interrupt be when I've got headphones on

Every situation is different.

My eldest has moderate autism. I had to remind him last Saturday 165 times (I counted) to not touch a delicate trinket my partner has on display. I eventually chose to put it away.

No amount of "respect" or reinforcement will fix this. His wiring is all screwed up.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#232

Post by dleslie »

acuozzo wrote: post #231
dleslie wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've raised two kids from birth to elementary while working from home, as the parent who did the sick care, before and after school care, and so forth. I'll take their company over that of an office any time. At least my kids respect me enough not to interrupt be when I've got headphones on and am working; something I can't say for any office I've ever worked in.

> At least my kids respect me enough not to interrupt be when I've got headphones on Every situation is different. My eldest has moderate autism. I had to remind him last Saturday 165 times (I counted) to not touch a delicate trinket my partner has on display. I eventually chose to put it away. No amount of "respect" or reinforcement will fix this. His wiring is all screwed up.

What amazes me is that it took you 165 attempts for you to put it away.

Nothing within reach of children is of any value in my home. I liken having children in my home to living with rising flood waters, which destroy everything in their reach.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#233

Post by ilaksh »

I think we should be anticipating 1-3 years in the future when much more comfortable VR/AR glasses come out. Then the question for knowledge work will start to change from "do they require physical presence?" to "what type of virtual presence is required?".

Because the details of interactions matter a lot and it's also important for companies to have firm policies. The most basic one being that you communicate effectively, appropriately using the tools available.

Within say 1-4 years, we should expect VR/AR to become much more like physical attendance. There will be 3D realistic rendering of faces, eye tracking and eye contact, 3d positional audio, and as I said, much more comfortable gear unlike the sweaty huge headsets.

So it's actually going to turn into a new battle to avoid bosses breathing down your _virtual_ neck. What the conversation should be is about the full range of types of presence and synchronous or asynchronous collaboration and work product distribution.

I think we will end up with more effective management and organizations because of a greater range of possible arrangements and more pressure towards actually measuring effectiveness based on work product. Managers that aren't qualified to judge intermediary work products will be eliminated or at least less common.

But we will see a lot of the types of office interactions that were supposedly only available in person start to become common in remote work using AR/VR.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#234

Post by kcplate »

fatnoah wrote: post #52
CoffeeOnWrite wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy for you! Out of curiosity, did your current housing situation provide the space for a comfortable and productive home office, or is this unexpected development putting pressure on your housing situation? (If you're part of a trend, that has implications for preferred housing layout and square footage. And, of course people in different housing situations should be expected to respond differently to fully-re…

I'm not OP, but I'm a manager that's 100% WFH at this point. I had a spare bedroom to devote to the workspace, and that's been a lifesaver, since (for me) part of maintaining WLB has been the ability to physically change spaces as a way of reinforcing that I'm no longer in "work mode" before/after certain times. Even without a separate room, having a dedicated work area might be a good idea to help with that balance…

My wife and I both went remote and the start of the pandemic and both of our respective companies have decided to keep our positions fully remote. We have a dedicated office space in our home that we share. I don’t think we would have been successful in WFH without the dedicated space. It feels like a place where work gets done. I can sit out in our living room, dining room, or kitchen but I find I am just not as productive in those spaces.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#235

Post by avion23 »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #187
the_doctah wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lost me at "T-Cell exhaustion". If that were a thing, repeated boosters wouldn't really make sense, now would it?

Basically, and this is my moderately self-educated layperson understanding: Immune escape is the process where viruses basically evolve to either evade antibodies that your body has created, or do things to prevent your body from creating effective antibodies in the first place. This is a really common thing with a lot of viruses, including some other coronaviruses. We were pretty lucky that, until omicron, Covid did…

Be careful, the propaganda is on both sides.

The antibodies of the vaccines don't work anymore. That's the opposite of "It seems like that’s unlikely because the vaccine worked so well". Antibody effectiveness against omnicron is negligible a few months after vaccination. As far as I understand the T-cells are still being trained, which might prevent you going to a hospital. But for the first week, you are totally on your own.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#236

Post by marcus_holmes »

teeceetime2 wrote: post #220
marcus_holmes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more the trend of companies being scared of litigation. They can't be sued for discrimination if they never actually turned you down.

Serious question - Isn't the company opening themselves up to more litigation by ghosting? For instance, doesn't a hiring company have to have a legitimate reason for not hiring someone, otherwise they're opening themselves up to a discrimination lawsuit? "Because you gave me no reason as to why you didn't hire me, I'm now left to believe it was based it was on my ethnicity, which is illegal. So here's a lawsuit."

I'm not a lawyer, just an MBA. But I believe it's the same principle as the famous "Shut The Fuck Up" advice for talking to cops. You have to incriminate yourself to be liable. If you don't say anything then you're presumed innocent (barring other evidence), and saying anything does you no favours.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#237

Post by mikhael28 »

slotrans wrote: post #119

I desperately want to work in an office again, but there are effectively no opportunities to do so. The companies doing in-office around here are outfits like Dish Network, that everyone knows are terrible employers. Like it or not, the software labor market is now nationwide, and remote is the rule rather than the exception. I don't know how long that will last, as I see very obvious negatives to remote for creative…

It exists dude. You just have to move to a tech hub like Seattle, SF, Miami, Austin - and then ruthlessly weed out companies that aren't in the office. You will likely need to work in a smaller startup, 5-50 employees who are in a smaller space.

I've got this situation in Seattle, but can luckily work remotely whenever. Unlimited PTO. Great business, on the up and up - coming into the office helps us get stuff done, and build camraderie but we have multiple people who are fully remote as well.

Find a place that respects what you are looking for, it's out there - don't give up.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#238

Post by make_it_sure »

ragnot wrote: post #70

We are still full remote and I don't think anyone has any intention to go back to "in-person" honestly. As a side note: I think the reason you are going to find so much friction with this is for the first time in recent history "workers" (specifically software engineers) have incredible leverage over management. I honestly don't think we've seen this since the days of labor unions. Think about it: software engineers…

That's not great for bootstrapped startups looking to hire. I see this will hit the startup ecosystem hard, at least bootstrapped ones.

Even for venture backed statups, the money doesn't flow around as much as before so eventually this big power developers have it's way too much and it will balance in the next few years.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#239

Post by lefstathiou »

enchantments wrote: post #134
lefstathiou wrote: post #24

Early on (during Covid) I made the decision that remote work was not for our company (SAAS for financial services) and two years in have zero regrets about it. We are clear about our expectations so there are no surprises to employees and new hires (or we filter out people that want it). Most of our clients in financial services have reached the same conclusion. One of my clients at a large bulge bracket said “if the…

Is this for your sales team in the US or your engineers in Ukraine (based on your open positions)? Do you manage engineering remotely but make them come into an office together?

All roles and offices outside of UA require in-office.

We are making exception for UA team given the circumstances. Our CTO is in NYC but we have a local leadership team.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#240

Post by acuozzo »

dleslie wrote: post #232
acuozzo wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least my kids respect me enough not to interrupt be when I've got headphones on Every situation is different. My eldest has moderate autism. I had to remind him last Saturday 165 times (I counted) to not touch a delicate trinket my partner has on display. I eventually chose to put it away. No amount of "respect" or reinforcement will fix this. His wiring is all screwed up.

What amazes me is that it took you 165 attempts for you to put it away. Nothing within reach of children is of any value in my home. I liken having children in my home to living with rising flood waters, which destroy everything in their reach.

> What amazes me is that it took you 165 attempts for you to put it away.

If I don't try, he'll never learn. He's already fighting uphill. I'm not going to disable him further by raising him in an environment which presents no challenges of its own.

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