The biggest problem I see with this logic is then what a farce most tech is then.
why do we need slack and teams and online chat windows if "in person" and phones will work? let alone VR?
Paul Graham on Remote Work
61–66 of 66 posts
Re: Paul Graham on Remote Work
#62Re: Paul Graham on Remote Work
#63The problem was the pandemic improvised remote work.
Remote work is a cultural thing more than anything. You can't turn remote and still take hours to answer a simple yes/no Slack message. You can't push everyone into remoting without emphasing the need of keeping written documents and meeting notes accessible to the team. You can't turn remote and just use Slack like an extended mail inbox you check three times a day. Remote will not work if don't have a documented onboarding.
Remote needs people to embrace this change and embrace other collaboration tools, such as Discord, Teams, Zoom, VSCode Live Share etc. Remote needs a commitment from everyone involved, it's not just sitting at your couch and doing everything like you did back in the office. And needs a different management mindset too, managers need to push people into doing remote right too, or the whole team gets penalised.
Until people figure it out we will keep having examples of "wow remote works great for X company" and "remote was a disaster for Y". I've been in productive and unproductive remote workplaces. I hated remote before until I saw it done properly.
And yes, remote won't work for everyone. And that's fine. If you hate Slack and Discord, that's not a problem, offices exist for a reason. Just don't try to measure the whole world with your ruler.
Re: Paul Graham on Remote Work
#64Conspiracy theory of the day ;)
Paul Graham is being paid by Big Office Rental to day this!
Re: Paul Graham on Remote Work
#65Why can’t “employees like it” ever count for anything?
Because if you give employees exactly what they "like", then they'll eventually want to be paid without doing any work. And if you give companies exactly what they want, then they'll eventually want talented people to work for them for free. So the two groups meet in the middle usually - depending on how competitive the job market it.
I didn’t say “count for everything” and I’m not talking about running an HR department. The WSJ article posted here moments ago is really the first article ve seen posted here that isn’t just some CEO’s think piece on remote work and how it’s really bad for junior employees oh no! Let junior employees decide what they prefer.
It wouldn’t be hard to simply put your money where your mouth is and pay differently for in person if it’s so much better and fire people remote if they don’t produce. If they do, there’s something else going on, but it’s not employee welfare or productivity in most cases.