After being remote 100% for the past 6 years I personally don't think I could endure an office again, at least not full-time. Part of it is a realization of how distracting most office plans were to me. Another part is having developed an unfortunate "allergy" to office visits, which makes itself reminded each time I visit company premises for kick-offs or important biannual meetings and such.
Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
311–320 of 830 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not going to comment on the entire Apollo Technical source, but I think some of their claims are misleading. For instance, they say this: > A study by Standford of 16,000 workers over 9 months found that working from home increase productivity by 13%. They link to the study, but it 404s. I believe this is the study [0] and it focuses on a single call-center. It's not a broad survey of 16,000 workers. [0]: https:/…
Your own cite is to a productivity report from a single quarter, when the WFH wave is in its 11th quarter now. This feels like Wikipedia-lawyer disingenuous citation dueling. Nothing in this thread (or wider discussion writ large) is truly data driven in any scientific sense. Everyone is arguing their subjective view here, the only question is your self-awareness about it.
I've removed that link to the BLS data as I agree it is erroneous to try to correlate that data to any broad trends in WFH / WFO. However, the Apollo Technical link is filled with misleading summaries and questionable sources.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd also add that comments like this: > Now, I am fully aware that there's a low of people for whom the horror of commute doesn't make up for the gains of socializing and others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people. Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary. Are remarkably condescending. Folks opting for a better work-life balance, wh…
I think you are reading three different reasons and you are mentally adding “do not care to invest” to all three. That is not what the OP said.
Here’s a direct quote:
Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary.
(I added the italics for emphasis.)
Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
#314My biggest frustration with the WFH discussion has been that the vast majority of people say that the #1 (and sometimes only) reason they prefer WFH is to save time on the commute. But this has not led to any discussions on how we can actually improve the commute, improve housing policy so people can live closer to work, etc. Instead, people have simply decided that theh will WFH instead, an option which isn’t availa…
> improve housing policy so people can live closer to work
Or, improve labor policy so work becomes a much smaller part of most people's lives.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It sounds like elementary school for adults. I think that sounds pretty amazing.
Sign me up, so long as there's nap time and recess.
My last couple of employers did, in fact, provide nap rooms for employees to use and they saw fairly frequent use.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
#316You're conflating not wanting to be in an office with being mediocre at their job, and that's simply not true. Some of the best developers I've met were remote long before COVID, and I'm certain it's because they were so good at what they did, they could just command such a work benefit. Now that such a benefit is widespread, the majority of people get to design their own lifestyle for the first time ever, and they r…
>Remote workers aren't enough to outsource, outsourcing is not a new thing, it's been around for a very long time.
Outsourcing is not new, but the covid WFH was basically a manhattan project to sand down it's rough edges. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of very smart people around the world who are willing to work for a fraction of first world wages, and are proficient enough in english that timezones are the last remaining barrier. Outsourcing won't leave us unemployed but I do believe that it will slowly drain the 'potential energy' of the current massive income inequality both within countries (bay area vs south) and without (usa vs elsewhere)
Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
WFO isn't necessarily about personal preference. People who want everyone to WFO believe that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. That is different than someone who desires to work from an office or remotely out of personal preference. For instance, I may prefer to WFH because it makes my life more convenient, but I can also accept that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. Personally, I haven't see…
> The closest work-related argument I've heard is that some people work better when they're free of distractions at the office. That takes us back to companies being collaborative human endeavors. One may feel they work better in isolation, but part of ones job is to interact with others, even if that's not fun. Have you worked in an open office or cubical farm? My hearing the sales guys isn't 'collaboration', it's d…
So without hopefully coming off too flippant, noise canceling headphones can solve all of that, they did for me in an open office space at least.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
#318I want to know as little as possible about the people I work with. Because I have to work with them to make money. Its a job, not a social club and if I could do anything else I would.
Exactly. I don't know why they are trying to push WFO so bad.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
#319With all due respect, this is mostly my problem with the "work-from-office" (WFO for ease) crowd. Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy. Very few, if any, of the WFH crowd want mandatated WFH, it would make no sense. But then the WFO crowd often says no, I don't care what makes you happy, because you being in makes me happy. That doesn't…
> If what makes you happy is a condition in which someone else is unhappy, that person is unlikely to react well.
I really hate zoom meetings. Unfortunately if everyone just does whatever they want, then even the in-person meetings get dragged onto zoom because there’s at least a few people who are remote and need to dial in. Early on as we returned to office we even wound up taking a lot of meetings in the office over zoom from our individual desks because there was so little point getting into a room together with so many others online.
“Everyone do whatever you want” as a WFH/WFO policy is kinda like “everyone do whatever you want” as a “no peeing in the swimming pool” policy.
> Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy.
It’s pointless weighing my hate of zoom against your hate of commuting or general WFO, but it’s definitely not the case that WFH crowd just wants everyone to be happy while the WFO crowd wants to strong-arm everyone. On the contrary, as my preference is for hybrid flexibility it often seems like the most vocal WFH proponents would like to strong-arm every business to be full-WFH.
I kinda like my company the way it is—and that won’t work for everyone, but maybe it doesn’t have to, right? The full WFH folks can look for companies that do that; the WFO folks can look for that; and the hybrid folks can look for that. And everyone is free to compromise based on the other aspects of the job.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
#320With all due respect, this is mostly my problem with the "work-from-office" (WFO for ease) crowd. Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy. Very few, if any, of the WFH crowd want mandatated WFH, it would make no sense. But then the WFO crowd often says no, I don't care what makes you happy, because you being in makes me happy. That doesn't…
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