611–620 of 913 posts
I can't imagine a quicker "kthxbye".
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> When the internet goes down, why aren't people simply just sending faxes? My phones are 1) a VOIPphone, and 2) a mobile device. The former relies on the internet; the latter can't send a FAX. PSTN is 90's technology, fewer and fewer people have a PSTN line.
So you kept up with the times. Good for you haha. I'm guessing there was some efficiency, simplicity in not going out and getting a PTSN line. Much like remote work, same results whilst cutting out inefficient offices and convoluted commutes.
Yup - it was much cheaper, my previous phone connection was from a cable company, and I already had internet. And as it turns out, VOIP seems to be more reliable than PSTN. And my (boutique) ISP specializes in VOIP.
I wouldn't have even bothered with VOIP, and just relied on mobile telephony; but I don't trust mobile providers, and I wanted a landline-style local phone-number.
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I think one thing which wasn't obvious to me early on is that halving the number of office days doesn't half the requirements for desk space. In my experience people have a strong preference for going in on similar days, particularly Tuesday and Thursday. So if you ask all of your employees to come in 2 days a week you end up needing desks for almost every employee. The result in my experience is you have either full…
Also, what's the point of going into the office if nobody else is there? My department had a hybrid model for a bit with a fabulous, newly built-out office. I liked seeing people in person a couple times a week. However, if I go in and nobody from my team is there or we need to still call in to meetings as if we were at home, what's the point?
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Why didn't you just move states and ask "forgiveness" later? Companies cannot tell you where and when to live and if they try it see who blinks first. I would certainly have ignored them and let them fire me or RIF me.
There are a lot of differences between state labor laws and taxes, remote doesn't mean you can just change residences willy-nilly.
My super noisy family makes me decree the title is not universally applicable
It's definitely a thing: with a young kid that emits distracting screeches at the seemingly perfect timing to disrupt deep concentration, office work is a lot more appealing for productivity. And a lot of management is older folks with kids. A lot of programmers in the age-discriminatory field of tech is ... younger people. But at the same time, my old job was a cattle pen of open floor concept. That sucked too. Now,…
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> Walking over and talking to someone is still far superior to any online communication. This is an example of a local maximum. This form of communication is better for the person doing the walking, but worse when looked at through most other frames: - worse for the person being asked, who was interrupted - worse for the people who weren't privy to that conversation but perhaps could have learned or contributed excep…
> - worse for the person being asked, who was interrupted Generally, only in terms of personal output. I find that the organization benefits overall. Of course, this is problematic when performance/compensation is tied strictly to personal output, but that is a separate discussion > - worse for the people who weren't privy to that conversation but perhaps could have learned or contributed except that they were OOO th…
I'm so glad you opened up this avenue for follow-up. Even when working at the office, people are not at their desks 100% of the time. People are still human beings and are out of the office for any number of legit reasons that have nothing to do with remote working: dental appointments, work travel, interviewing candidates, vacation, sick leave, etc. Regardless of how you organize your workplace or what mandates you set, people are going to be out all the time. So your knowledge sharing is among the best who are available right now, not necessarily the best sources.
> Somewhat true, but this is completely unavoidable. I know of zero cases where all institutional knowledge is recorded and not siloed in humans. Of course there are degrees.
The key again is the degrees. An organization can choose to bias toward using modern tools or not. "Modern tools" here also broadly includes "writing" because it provides so many advantages over synchronous conversations for knowledge sharing.
> This is why teams exist, why hierarchical organizations exist throughout history, and proper separation of work is crucial.
Here I call your attention to geography. There are any number of reasons for staff to be located where they are, and staff don't typically work on a single project over their careers. This means they will change teams from time to time. Combine these facts and you're going to end up with teams composed of people who live in different places, where it might not make sense to relocate staff (e.g. project only lasts a year).
An example might be: implementation consultants for a software company based in Chicago working onsite at a client in Germany. I suppose you could move the whole software company to Germany, but that only scales to one client. Which also highlights that people are often on multiple teams at the same time.
These concerns are most salient in the most hierarchical organizations, which tend to be the largest and have the largest geographic footprints.
Video conf still sucks. It's literally the same as 10 years ago. Does anyone have a workplace where it is really seamless, high resolution, and just works? Or is using any of these new technologies? Maybe VR will help... But not being in-person for collaboration/morale is miles apart. I wonder if employees would personally cover the cost of a one week meetup once per month if their other option was move city and offi…
I agree it sucked Pre-Covid, but now it just works. We mostly use Teams. We are RTO 2 days a week, but most work meetings are still in Teams. Demoing is way easier because you can simply share your screen rather than carrying your laptop to the various meeting rooms.
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No, they’ll have people willing to commute 30 minutes a day to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to talk to. Ask service workers what their commute is like and how many days they have to be “in the office” for. Edit: found the people that have never worked retail or restaurant
What does this have to do with anything? Obviously there are jobs where WFH is not possible. Nobody is disputing that. Should we all be required to wear uniforms to work because some jobs require that? Some jobs require you to be clean shaven, should that requirement be universal as well? Or what about working night shifts? Doesn't seem fair that nurses have to work overnight shifts while pampered office worker get t…
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