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The WFH Folks

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: The WFH Folks

#11

Post by sedeki »

cassonmars wrote: post #7

The loss of cognitive overhead of dealing with a physical workspace with distractions abound has to be countered with a new cognitive overhead – putting initiative forward in reaching out to coworkers, setting up regular 1:1s to just chat. While the conversations may initially feel forced (because they are indeed artificial), once camaraderie is built, it feels as natural as an office chat.

Setting up regular 1:1s just to chat sounds good. Though if I were new at a company, I'd feel forced to have a work-related/productive reasons to schedule these meetings...

What do you title these 1:1s so that your coworkers will accept them, and so that your manager won't lift and eyebrow?

Re: The WFH Folks

#12

Post by kradeelav »

sedeki wrote: post #11
cassonmars wrote: post #7

The loss of cognitive overhead of dealing with a physical workspace with distractions abound has to be countered with a new cognitive overhead – putting initiative forward in reaching out to coworkers, setting up regular 1:1s to just chat. While the conversations may initially feel forced (because they are indeed artificial), once camaraderie is built, it feels as natural as an office chat.

Setting up regular 1:1s just to chat sounds good. Though if I were new at a company, I'd feel forced to have a work-related/productive reasons to schedule these meetings... What do you title these 1:1s so that your coworkers will accept them, and so that your manager won't lift and eyebrow?

Not the person you're replying to, but as a manager: a manager who dislikes employees reaching out for 1:1's with other coworkers for any reason is a bad one, imo. I encourage my folks to be proactive in learning from other teams and to be adults who don't need hand-holding. As long as they hold up their bargain of a reasonable amount of work done in a time frame, what they do with their time isn't my business.

(caveat that it's for normal water cooler talk and not a top-of-the-iceberg issue of a very big iceberg of issues.)

Re: The WFH Folks

#13

Post by emptyparadise »

Putting up appearances and wearing masks (metaphorically) is daunting to me, so WFH has been a blessing. Maybe there's just something wrong with me when everyone is shouting that they want to go back and drag me back as well.

Re: The WFH Folks

#14

Post by rotart »

The lack of any meaningful social connection is a beneficial feature of WFH for me. I've switched companies many times and worked entirely remotely for the last 10 years with a short stint where I was a team lead and the company was WFH adverse. Not having a meaningful social connection to many of my coworkers has allowed me to focus on professional and personal development. When I want to socialize with coworkers I usually maintain texting or messaging relationships with coworkers who valued my work so I am able to keep a professional network in my pocket without ever needing to spend time in environments that are outside my control.

New people settle in faster in on site environments because we adapt to environments especially when we are required to.

The ideal situation requires a lot of effort and probably some desire to side-step professional development (talking about work) to spend time with people you currently work with doing something you enjoy (like playing board games). The ideal situation for me is probably something like being able to easily "coordinate company socials" with "let's play a game over Zoom/Discord". Even better if the Zoom/Discord are not company monitored and the interaction is ephemeral. Few products or services would give up the data collection since morale and performance can be measured in relation to the usage of these products or services.

Re: The WFH Folks

#15

Post by overgard »

Honestly yeah. I used to have a lot of friendships formed in the workplace, but the post pandemic places I've worked, there's certainly coworkers I liked but I can't say I know much about them at all. I don't think zoom socializing works all that great, ie zoom happy hours or whatnot but maybe that's just me.

On the other hand, not having a commute, and not having to fake being busy during down times makes it easier to strengthen outside of work friendships and hobbies.

I also think occasional remote meetups in person can really help. I think it's easier to hold a casual text or zoom conversation if you've interacted in person a bit

Re: The WFH Folks

#16

Post by eyelidlessness »

I’ve WFH almost my whole (>20y) career. I wasn’t around to say how this has affected my current team because it was fully remote before I joined and before the pandemic. My previous team went remote earlyish in the pandemic and at least from my perspective became more social. I personally have been more inclined to be social with my community outside of work, which is something I’ve struggled with in the the past. I’ve also been more inclined to have meaningful social connections with the coworkers I actually enjoy socializing with because I have more choice about the social circumstances. I’m quite happy not to have the artificial social pressure to be working and friends and working and friends and working all the time. To the extent other people do have that desire I hope you’ll design your thing to recognize that some of us very deliberately don’t want to participate and make every bit of it philosophically opt-in and consensual.

Re: The WFH Folks

#17

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

All my coworkers are on other continents, covid didn’t change that, I see no difference in how I interact with them.

Even if they lived in the apartment next to me, maybe I don’t want to hang with them after hours or on the weekend? Maybe I don’t want to talk work outside the office?

If your lonely go find a bar - don’t drag us all back to the workplace!

Re: The WFH Folks

#18

Post by khedoros1 »

Cayde-6 wrote: post #10

Treat it like joining a new web forum community back in the earlier days of the internet. Follow and as appropriate participate in the on-topic sections (e.g. project-related slack channels). Lurk a bit in the off-topic sections (e.g. slack #random channel, but also look for others employees may have set up like #cooking) to get the general vibe of the place. Then make an effort to ramp up participation over time to…

> Treat it like joining a new web forum community back in the earlier days of the internet.

Heh. My pattern with forums was to join with the intention of taking part, end up making just a couple of comments on a couple of threads (related to why I was interested in the forum in the first place), and then forgetting that I had a login there.

Re: The WFH Folks

#19

Post by kxrm »

I can't speak for everyone but I've been working from home my entire career since 2002. I don't feel like my co-working relationships were any worse than any other co-working experience I had at jobs that required my presence (teen jobs like grocery or video production jobs prior to me getting into software). If anything my WFH relationships were stronger and I still keep in touch with them to this day. Plus I feel that they are more diverse as my co-workers are all over the globe so I feel like I learned more about different cultures than I would have taking an office job.

Additionally if I am bothered by someone or am generally not interested in them, it's far easier to avoid them in a WFH setting. My interactions with them can truly be limited to only whatever it takes to get the job done.

That said, I recognize that working this way isn't for everyone. Some people need to breath the same air to feel a connection with others. I have just never needed that.

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