271–280 of 326 posts
Currently in crisis because I simply can't handle communication in remote work. For something I do for the majority of my working day, I feel devoid of human interaction to such an extent that it's massively affecting my mental health. I regularly find myself clock-watching until the next time I can talk to someone because everyone is always busy - there are no water coolers or coffee breaks to stitch in between. Eve…
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Asking "how it's going?" without following up about a specific task is objectively bad.
No it isn’t. You may not like it, but the idea that’s objectively bad is your opinion not a fact. What’s wrong with a company’s employees deciding they like checking in with each other and not having it tied to a specific task?
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They're not referring to socializing with you, per se. I see this mistake made all the time in these discussions. Many just prefer to be around other people, myself included. They're not necessarily the caricature of the "overly social office mate that needs to find friends outside of work" that you are implying. I really think you're overassuming your knowledge of the person you're responding to.
It’s not a mistake. People who are pro-WFH are so dogmatic about it (and so protective of their “right” to WFH) that they intentionally reduce anyone who prefers working in an office to somebody with no social life.
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No it isn’t. You may not like it, but the idea that’s objectively bad is your opinion not a fact. What’s wrong with a company’s employees deciding they like checking in with each other and not having it tied to a specific task?
it depends on who is asking, of course
Again, nothing against you if you dislike being asked how things are going by a coworker — but if that is the culture of the company you work at, there’s nothing wrong with it.
It might be wrong for you, so you either get a different job or learn to deal with it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're not referring to socializing with you, per se. I see this mistake made all the time in these discussions. Many just prefer to be around other people, myself included. They're not necessarily the caricature of the "overly social office mate that needs to find friends outside of work" that you are implying. I really think you're overassuming your knowledge of the person you're responding to.
It’s not a mistake. People who are pro-WFH are so dogmatic about it (and so protective of their “right” to WFH) that they intentionally reduce anyone who prefers working in an office to somebody with no social life.
Or more fairly, probably the inverse; plenty of WFHers wouldn’t be so derisive, we just don’t hear from them
Currently in crisis because I simply can't handle communication in remote work. For something I do for the majority of my working day, I feel devoid of human interaction to such an extent that it's massively affecting my mental health. I regularly find myself clock-watching until the next time I can talk to someone because everyone is always busy - there are no water coolers or coffee breaks to stitch in between. Eve…
I have to admit as someone who enjoys WFH and would never work in an office again, that having co-workers like you is one of the main reasons. You should work on not relying so much on others. You may be benefiting from all that social "charging up", but you're taking that from the person on the other side of the conversation. I work to make money, not to fill someone's social void. You'll be happier if you explore t…
> Remote work requires communicating more, less frequently, because asynchronous communication involves less frequent, but richer communication, meaning there is less time talking about the work and more time doing it, allowing the system to optimize for throughput and flow. This whole thing seems to be what people struggle with about remote work. Communication is way, way more important, and being an effective commu…
There's a bit of a challenge today with chat, though. I work 4 timezones away from most of my team and we all prefer to swap e-mails, but chat seems to have stripped away some folks' ability to methodically go through topics, explain options and summarise next steps, leading to the usual "let's set up a call [to actually discuss everything in the e-mail thread]". Reading through old mailing-lists (and even older e-ma…
In my view, it was GMail with its top-posting proportional-font-only interface that killed email and mailing lists.
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Oh.. The poor juniors. Instead of properly adapting the onboarding and mentoring to the remote setting let's romanticize the good old ways that imho sucked. Let's cherrypick and pretend everything is fine. We went from offices to cubicles to open space and nobody stopped to think if it was a good idea. Wr transformed the office from a place where work actually is done to a placr where we "socialize". Work? Do that on…
Can you please make your substantive points without fulminating, snarking, or posting in the flamewar style? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .
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it depends on who is asking, of course
No, it doesn’t. Again, nothing against you if you dislike being asked how things are going by a coworker — but if that is the culture of the company you work at, there’s nothing wrong with it. It might be wrong for you , so you either get a different job or learn to deal with it.
Wasting people's time is objectively, universally bad. Even if it wasn't universally bad, it would be at least overwhelmingly bad in the context of a productive enterprise, which most workplaces are.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it depends on who is asking, of course
No, it doesn’t. Again, nothing against you if you dislike being asked how things are going by a coworker — but if that is the culture of the company you work at, there’s nothing wrong with it. It might be wrong for you , so you either get a different job or learn to deal with it.
As a long-time WFH person I always assume I am big-time socially inept (and I definitely am) but apparently office-dwellers (you) are even worse!
To me it is clear that Bill-From-This-Mornings-Standup saying "Hey, what's up" is different from Emily-Director-Of-HR saying "Hey, how's it going today?" is different from "Kim-your-bosses-bosses-boss" saying "Good morning. Got a minute?"