Maybe after generations of learning how to effectively work remotely. Humans and social structures evolved with in person interaction.
Remote startups will win the war for top talent
411–420 of 492 posts
Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent
#412"Your remote team is my company's opportunity." Purely anecdotal based on my own experience, but at my company we have some people who work in an office and lots more that work remotely. The in office staff contribute more ideas, work, fixes, and functional software than the remote teams by a factor of 4 or 5, or sometimes, depending on the in office worker, 10 times. Those are hard numbers right out of our project m…
I wouldn't assume the in office workers get more done because they go to the office, correlation != causation. It seems just as likely to me that the most dedicated, hard working employees are the ones willing to commute in to the office in the first place, and they would get more work done than others regardless of where they work.
Maybe in that case but not necessarily.
It might just be their home isn't so nice. Ages before covid I worked at a company that had an office but was mostly remote.
There was a guy who was going to the office because his wife was unemployed and they lived next to his mother in law, so he wanted some calm.
I'd go because the heating at home sucked so on cold days it was better to be in the office :D
Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am convinced that in office software teams produce more and better code overall than remote ones do. I am remote now and go to my office about a week every two months, and those weeks tend to be ones I can rally the team to get big initiatives done. I put in the same effort when I'm remote but it just doesn't work out the same. You can blame tooling, you can blame the company not being remote-first or remote-forwar…
For in-office work to come back, employers need to stop tracking time. Most office workers work 2-3 hours a day max. The 8 hour workday is is a relic from factory work. If I was to go back to the office, this is what my day would look like: * Show up at the office at 10:30, just in time for the meeting * Put in a couple hours of solid work, finishing whatever story I planned to complete today * Go home at 1:30 to smo…
I don't disagree with that. My current office people keep about 6 hour workdays, including their lunch break. We're also multi-national so overlap is usually where shit gets done. I have many days where the bulk of my productivity comes in 1 hour of a call with a Portuguese or American engineer. (I'm in Iceland).
That might sound like a case for being remote, but for me, it's usually been much more effective in the office because that single hour of overlap was most of the day. Yes, some of it is wasted time, but I did and still do build great working and personal relationships with my peers in that "wasted" time that I still cherish.
Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's entirely unfair. The ability to do most of these jobs remote wasn't even really possible until a decade ago, and interia of in office work kept it that way for most existing enterprises. Yet still, plenty of startups in 2019 chose to be remote, and plenty chose to be in person. Also I would bet that the amount of people who prefer remote has gone up drastically since 2019, both due to exposure to it, and due t…
It's not unfair when knowledge on the effects of these practices were public several decades ago and companies still insisted on optimizing for employee per square foot while giving their executives private offices. All remote work did was showcase people can in fact rebel against the status quo when the inertia associated is entirely self-inflicted.
Nice post! At my company, one of their locations has insufficient space for all employees. As a result, they introduced "hot desking". It is widely hated by all non-executive-level employees. Literally, you cannot keep anything at your desk. (Put it in a locker everyday that feels like high school!) The message received by non-execs: "You are not human; this is the matix; you are interchangable." Of course, none of the execs are forced to hot-desk their nice corner offices. (FYI: I have a terribly combative personality.) When I saw one of the execs after the plan what annouced, I casually asked: "Oh, what days are you WFH? I'll take your office." They almost fainted with fear.
Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent
#415I'd prefer to work at a fully in-person startup next time I join one, personally.
Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent
#416Working remotely since covid has actually been a boon personally.
I have intense anxiety and panic when working in skyscrapers. I get a feeling similar to fear of heights and I'm unable to function productively.
In addition I was able to mitigate some of my interviewing anxiety by drinking half a glass of wine during the remote interview.
I now get to work at a FAANG company where previously my mental health/anxiety would have barred me from even having a shot.
Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just answering for myself, but no, absolutely not. Especially not while the office remains an open floor plan with no noise isolation. I hate commuting, I hate shitty office lunches and interruptions totally ruin my focus. The things that people like about the office (long lunches with coworkers, spontaneous events, fun conversations) are literally my bane.
You raise an excellent point: I hope the shift to remote forces in-person companies to make their offices more attractive for workers (i.e. not open offices) to compete for the shrinking pool of people willing to work in-person. But for the sake of argument imagine the least-bad in-person office you've worked at, and a company able to pay up to high six figures. Are you saying there's does not exist a salary in that…
The utility of money decreases as you have more of it.
The first $100k a year is huge. The second $100k a year is useful. By the time you're at 300k, 400k, the utility is very low unless you just really enjoy collecting sports cars.
I have a nice home. It is 25 years old, but I do a lot of work on it myself. I have a nice enough vehicle that is reliable. I can afford whatever books I want, to go hiking wherever, and whatever I want at the grocery store.
Why would I give up a work environment I like, with great food and no commute, where I can have it quiet as a mouse, just to make more money that wouldn't make a difference to my life?
Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you considered that those of your view and those espousing that remote is more difficult might have different personalities, levels of need of social interaction, or lifestyles? Have you considered that your company is self-selecting for those who flourish in remote, but that those whose personalities differ are self-selecting for working in an office environment? It's OK for there to not be a one size fits all…
I think it is probably more of an intracompany issue, not intercompany. I see older people in management who can't deal with remote and younger people who are eager to work from wherever.
I see exactly the opposite where I work, and I am "hard-core WFO" but non-discriminatory (WFH is fine!). You wrote your post like it is a physics theorem (absolute).
To be more open-minded: If you work in a place where (old/er) management is intolerant of diverse working styles... well, f-ck them! Please kindly find a better place to work! :-)
Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the work is not obvious, it's almost certainly not important. If you can't communicate, changing where people are located won't help. Please don't lock me into a room to stare at you while you slowly gather your thoughts. My time is important. Gather your thoughts and then present them. Don't make me babysit you.
If work is obvious then I don’t need to pay one 6 figures to do it. Or to put it better, if work is obvious, someone has already done the work for you
> if work is obvious, someone has already done the work for you
I wish that was true. A lot of work is obvious but undone. A lot of issues go unresolved or are chalked up as "unimportant". Let me use your product for five minutes and I will give you the work that needs to be done.
Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent
#420"A study conducted on the main campus of a Fortune 500 company found that just 10 percent of all communications occurred between employees whose desks were more than 500 meters apart. This suggests that once companies span multiple floors, buildings, or campuses, they’ve already lost much of the collaborative value of being “in the office” together." This point often seems to get missed. If you're at a large company,…
This cuts both ways though. Working from home my "circle of communication" has gotten much smaller than it ever was before, because I don't run in to people.
I'd argue if a company depends too much on "spontaneous hallway conversations" for information flow/exchange, that should be treated as a problem to correct. Most places I've worked that relied heavily on word-of-mouth had similar problems:
- Terrible written documentation
- Major and minor decisions not reaching everyone affected, resulting in a lot of people not knowing what's going on
- Perception of decisions getting made in secret or without transparency
- Other non-verbal communication channels get neglected, e.g. the only way to get in touch with Director ABC is to physically accost him in the hall
- Remote workers are frequently forgotten or treated as second class citizens
- Favorable treatment for in-groups and cliques, based on extroversion rather than job performance
These all seem like objectively bad problems for a business, and I'd argue many of them stem directly from overreliance on face-to-face.