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Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

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Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#541

Post by yamtaddle »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #259
kotlin2 wrote: post #237

Earlier 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…

> Have you worked in an open office or cubical farm? My hearing the sales guys isn't 'collaboration', it's distraction. Hearing my coworkers at the much-lauded ping pong table having a great time while I'm trying to get work done isn't collaboration either. Collaboration is often code for 'meetings'. As evidenced by my outlook calendar, those haven't stopped. I find that people who make this argument are those who either spend the majority of their day 'collaborating' or those who have offices they can escape to when they need to think.

That. The one medium-sized (several hundred employees) open-floor office I've worked in, I left in a matter of months in part because it was intensely stressful and difficult to actually do work. Loud, motion everywhere, people walking behind me constantly. Even the goddamn floor (so, also my monitor) shook when people walked on it, which was never not happening because there were so many people.

Go fucking figure, the managers had offices. And, HR got their own walled-off room just for them. Gee, I wonder why. Maybe because the experience for everyone else was basically hell and they knew it.

I could see good offices experiencing a decline in productivity with WFH, but I'm not sure that's the kind of office most people work in, and the bad kind would almost have to be more productive with WFH.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#542

Post by KerrAvon »

unethical_ban wrote: post #147
shp0ngle wrote: post #106

This post and the “parenting” post should join together. Have a kid, then you’ll be happy you work remotely and won’t miss other people.

Other than the large exception of taking care of small children and the timing of getting them from school, I have heard it is nice for people to have an outlet from home life.

Maybe you should have thought of that before having children? Some people aren't cut out to be parents, and that's OK.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#543

Post by renewiltord »

A few of my friends run a bunch of venture-backed startups.

Some are in-office, some are remote. As far as I can see, all of them seem roughly as happy and roughly as successful.

To be honest, I prefer the office. At my company we all work from the office. So it looks like people self-select into these categories and so it's all for the best.

In-office people work with in-office people. Flexible work people work with flexible work people.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#544

Post by teawrecks »

Zezima wrote: post #457
dont__panic wrote: post #340

Most of my distaste for WFO comes from two places: - the USA's failure to provide even a single city that's pleasant to live in and travel around without a car - tech company insistence on open office layouts that are not conducive to deep work The first one sounds like a commute problem... but it manifests in more ways than you think. When you have to travel around in a car, everything is expensive. Parking is a pai…

You've described Brooklyn and NYC at large... if you're anti-car then consider the city. Boston is a good second choice. I've lived in both. NYC comes with the normal downsides of the biggest city in the US: expenses, limited space, crowding, and noise. But this is true of all large cities in the world: Paris, London, Tokyo, etc. But it comes with the immense upsides of a functioning metropolitan transit system, whic…

What if I can't fit in a shoebox and can't afford anything larger? What if I have a dog and want them to have a yard that doesn't require me to leash them every time they want to go outside? I don't mind sharing a yard with neighbors, heck I would even share a kitchen space if I knew it would be maintained well and available when I need it. But none of that is even an option.

I don't buy the idea that only hyper-dense cities can be walkable. The fact that NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc. are the closest thing we have to anti-car living speaks directly to OP's point about the US not prioritizing building comfortable communities.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#545

Post by BaseballPhysics »

tsimionescu wrote: post #516
hluska wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

The phrase makes it clear that these are different people than the ones who can't stand the commute etc. And yes, there are people who work only to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary. What exactly is wrong with that, or why do you think the OP implies there is something wrong with that?

> And yes, there are people who work only to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary.

And what does that have to do with preferring to work from home?

It's almost comical the implication that those same people, pre-COVID, weren't going to the office and phoning it in.

IMO the two topics--being... I dunno... not ambitious, and working from home--are entirely orthogonal concepts. And the implication that people who advocate for wfh options are more likely to "not care to invest themselves" is, charitably, misguided.

If anything, wfh makes it possible for more people to achieve their professional goals since the labour market has opened up significantly for folks in other geographies, or who might have restrictions in their personal life (e.g. being a caregiver, having disability, etc) that make commuting a significant barrier.

> What exactly is wrong with that, or why do you think the OP implies there is something wrong with that?

Because the OP goes on to say:

I always saw tech as the field where a disproportionally large amount of people truly love what they do. Mostly, because it takes so much grit and persistence to get good at it that most people wouldn't succeed unless they see something in it beyond putting food on the table.

It's clear they view "grit" and "persistence" as virtues, and "not [caring] to invest themselves beyond what is necessary" as a vice.

Frankly, this smells pretty strongly of hustle culture, and I've had more than enough of that.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#546

Post by civilized »

What I take issue with is failing to distinguish between

1. I am passionate about my work, both the process and the product, I'm an essential contributor, I care about my coworkers personally, and I do everything in my power to help my team succeed.

2. I come into the office every day.

In my opinion, these things just have no connection to each other. The company doesn't need me in the office. My coworkers don't need me in the office. My manager doesn't need me in the office. If any of these people or organizations think they need me in the office, they should explain why. Then I will tell them why they are wrong, because they are wrong. They can fill whatever hole my absence from the office left with other things, and they can do so much more easily than I can waste 2 hours a day commuting that is better spent on my family.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#547

Post by [deleted] »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #418
bodge5000 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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. Kind of, but I dont really think the analogy works because if you flip it around its just as bad. "Everyone has to swim in the piss pool because I want to piss in the pool, but also want people to swim with". That doesn't sound agreeable either. "Nobodies allowed to piss in…

It seems to me that there isn't a consensus because, in the post-covid era, every company had a large segment of the "prefers WFH" people and they all insisted on their current company accommodating them. I'm not saying they did anything bad, there's nothing wrong with advocating for your own interests at work, but a lot of people who like WFO are justifiably frustrated because they thought they had joined a company…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#548

Post by Spivak »

ghaff wrote: post #454
cgearhart wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ov…

>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. Something often missing from these discussions is that at many large companies, A lot of people are scattered around the country/world so, even if they are in an office, a lot of meetings are going to be b…

> A lot of people are scattered around the country/world so, even if they are in an office

This realization actually caused my last company to full 180 on their WFO policy to "Fuck it work wherever you want in the world, including in one of our offices. Just give us two weeks heads up if you move so we can sort out the taxes."

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#550

Post by danesparza »

I'm sure there are plenty of meetup groups that could satisfy your longing for chatting about technical concepts and then getting a good meal together. Why not explore those?

Yes -- it's not the same as doing this with coworkers. But the world has moved on. Acceptance is part of the process.

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