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Paul Graham on Remote Work

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Paul Graham on Remote Work

#31

Post by IlPeach »

40yearoldman wrote: post #17
surfingdino wrote: post #16

Like all generalisations, this one is wrong. What companies need to do is work out a hybrid approach or prove to their employees that it is necessary to come to the office. If you are working on a prototype robotics project you do need to be in the office, but if you are writing microservices you do not need to come to the office to watch the chest thumping antics of your CEO or sales people. I don't write better cod…

The problem is not that work like micro services can be done remote. The problem is remote workers end up doing other things than working. It makes a mess for meeting scheduling and collaboration. Effectively slowing the progression of the project down. I work at a company who his hybrid and has remote. Every remote engineer is damn near impossible to work with, a forget anything happening on Mondays or Fridays. “Oh…

That sounds like more of a managerial or organisational fuck-up rather than a problem with remote on itself.

Several companies I worked for used a very similar set of processes as when they were working in the office, paired with a set of wrong expectations with the employees.

Moving away from this and understanding how to work at best took several months, and entirely flipped around the team's ability to perform, to the point that being remote was even more productive both on a subjective and objective scale (e.g. lead/cycle time).

Re: Paul Graham on Remote Work

#32

Post by javcasas »

It is not about productivity, it has never been about productivity.

It is about power and control.

Remote workers can have a life, can see their children and friends, and may even have energy to go chasing other job offers. HR and CxO hate all of that with a passion that would outshine a thousand suns.

Re: Paul Graham on Remote Work

#34

Post by throwawaysleep »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #9
daly wrote: post #8

Paul, Do you commute to an office every day, sit at a desk in a 4 person shared cubicle, have monthly "performance reviews" by someone unqualified to manage your subject area, have to deal with 3 children's weekly scheduled school-caused sickness, own an old car and only 1 so it is out of service when it needs repair? I worked from home for years ... scratch that, I "lived at work" while at home for years. If you bel…

We have to face realities. It's obvious that companies have found that working from home negatively affects productivity. Companies are all about saving money and maximizing productivity. If working from home had been at an even level, or even a bit less, to working from the office then they would had chosen it over having people go into the office since maintaining an office, and all that goes with it, is very expen…

> Companies are all about saving money and maximizing productivity.

I have yet to hear any company even robustly define productivity for tech workers.

Re: Paul Graham on Remote Work

#37

Post by luis_cho »

The problem with remote work is that it effectively solves more problems than it creates and this is a nightmare for those who live off speculation under the guise of "changing the world".

Now they have at risk the millionaire rents they charge their employees.

The worst part is that the decentralisation of talent puts their monopoly at risk.

Re: Paul Graham on Remote Work

#38

Post by MichaelRo »

40yearoldman wrote: post #17
surfingdino wrote: post #16

Like all generalisations, this one is wrong. What companies need to do is work out a hybrid approach or prove to their employees that it is necessary to come to the office. If you are working on a prototype robotics project you do need to be in the office, but if you are writing microservices you do not need to come to the office to watch the chest thumping antics of your CEO or sales people. I don't write better cod…

The problem is not that work like micro services can be done remote. The problem is remote workers end up doing other things than working. It makes a mess for meeting scheduling and collaboration. Effectively slowing the progression of the project down. I work at a company who his hybrid and has remote. Every remote engineer is damn near impossible to work with, a forget anything happening on Mondays or Fridays. “Oh…

Some people are and will always be assholes, dishonest, crooks, borderline criminals. We shouldn't all be imprisoned in the office because management is incapable of at least dealing with these offenders.

After COVID we switched to almost 100% work from home. Office became mandatory 3 days a week but only on paper. In practice workers applied "passive aggressive" method, just didn't show up. And management didn't do squat since most of them were also working from home.

But I did have bad apples as colleagues. One guy in my team would be idle for long swathes of time although it would appear "green" on Teams - first sign someone's an asshole: they put a mouse move program but don't reply for hours. At least be honest and let your status be idle when you're not at your desk - we're all humans and I get that. Anyhow problem wasn't as much that he wasn't at his desk, when sometime I did manage to contact him in dire need of some crosscheck on the project we had to deliver, guy exceeded himself in being a passive aggressive jerk: he'd reply one or two questions then just disappear again IN MIDDLE OF A SENTENCE. For hours on end. Like I'm talking with him, ask him something, replies so I know he's there, immediately I ask him something else and he's gone. Sometimes until next day.

At some point I blew a gasket on him, called him on Teams when he was accidentally available and unloaded dicks and Christs and Gods and what else involves swearing in my native language. He was much more responsive for about two days then reverted to default behavior.

I thought of reporting him to my manager but I knew it would be useless. I tried naming things before in daily scrum with the management and upper management and didn't go well, reckoned what I need to do to keep my job. Eventually the company tanked and fired everyone (me included), so at least there's some divine justice. I found a new job in less than a week nevertheless, being around since the 1970s these guys might be more sensible than my previous employer.

I guess the moral of the story is: when bottom layer workers are dishonest, management pulls the strings and gets them in line. But what do you do when management itself is corrupted to the core? ... which I think is by far the rule rather than the exception. Who is policing "the police"?

Re: Paul Graham on Remote Work

#39

Post by torginus »

Personally, I have team members from 3 countries, and we collaborate just fine from home, and a lot of people have decided to move hundreds of kilometers away from our office.

Forcing everyone to move back into the office would probably be impossible for like 2/3rds of our team-members anyway and would probably require either letting those people go, or more likely, reorganize the teams and replacing them with local workers.

I can't stress how much economic damage it would cause, and how difficult it would be to hire and train people on the specialist skillsets we need.

Re: Paul Graham on Remote Work

#40

Post by kramerger »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #9
daly wrote: post #8

Paul, Do you commute to an office every day, sit at a desk in a 4 person shared cubicle, have monthly "performance reviews" by someone unqualified to manage your subject area, have to deal with 3 children's weekly scheduled school-caused sickness, own an old car and only 1 so it is out of service when it needs repair? I worked from home for years ... scratch that, I "lived at work" while at home for years. If you bel…

We have to face realities. It's obvious that companies have found that working from home negatively affects productivity. Companies are all about saving money and maximizing productivity. If working from home had been at an even level, or even a bit less, to working from the office then they would had chosen it over having people go into the office since maintaining an office, and all that goes with it, is very expen…

Assuming your employees are not charlatans, WFH normally means a bit more work for the manager in exchange for somewhat improved productivity.

Maybe your managers are lazy or incompetent?

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