Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The workers have spoken: They're staying home

computerworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 263 posts

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#51

Post by dylan604 »

moffkalast wrote: post #37
whatever1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buses also are useless. Thry routinely waste you hours due to their slowness and inconsistency. The choices really are two: subway (or any dedicated rail thing) or car.

Or get this, a bike (in case you live under ~10 km away). Just rolls the gym hours into the commute for double efficiency, and you can be always on time since traffic can't really affect you.

Not really sure how this is possible unless there are dedicated bike paths that use different roads than what the cars use. Otherwise, bikes get stuck at intersections just like cars do except for the asshats that think traffic rules do not apply bicycles causing more problems. Dedicated paths are only slightly less logistically than rail to install after roads have already been in use.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#52

Post by BenFranklin100 »

RiverCrochet wrote: post #7

It shouldn't take me an hour and 30 minutes in congested, underbuilt roads to drive 20 miles into the office. Cities and their wealthy politically-connected commercial office building owners have had decades to fix this problem. No sympathy.

That almost entirely due to current zoning that separates commercial and residential into separate districts, and severely restricts density of residential housing in favor of sprawling single family homes.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#54

Post by BenFranklin100 »

Suppafly wrote: post #48
BenFranklin100 wrote: post #19

Remote work for developers is a viable option. We are rapidly moving the majority of our software development to India, and only keeping product leads in Europe and the US.

>We are rapidly moving the majority of our software development to India Good luck with that, almost every company that does that either fails or brings development back to their main location.

It’s working out spectacularly.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#55

Post by ramesh31 »

buildbot wrote: post #5

Companies get so much more out of people working from home - Microsoft has realized this and still broadly supports remote work.

>Companies get so much more out of people working from home - Microsoft has realized this and still broadly supports remote work.

This is what I find so funny. We accomplished more in the two years of full remote than any period before or since. Half the company now runs on software built during that time. But management refuses to acknowledge the fact, and mandated RTO.

I am 100% convinced that a full remote team can run circles around the same team in-office. Probably we will see a new crop of startups eating people's lunch that haven't figured this out.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#56

Post by andrepd »

moffkalast wrote: post #37
whatever1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buses also are useless. Thry routinely waste you hours due to their slowness and inconsistency. The choices really are two: subway (or any dedicated rail thing) or car.

Or get this, a bike (in case you live under ~10 km away). Just rolls the gym hours into the commute for double efficiency, and you can be always on time since traffic can't really affect you.

I bike every day to work because I finally live in a place where there's bike paths/roads almost everywhere there's car roads.

I would never dare to do so where I lived before: I'd almost certainly be a blob of blood and guts splattered on the road by now.

It's infuriating how little thought is given to anything that is not a road for The Car. Billions of taxpayer money spent on massive road construction and repair but god forbid we build bike paths for 1/20th of the cost and 1/100th of the upkeep.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#57

Post by rimunroe »

LiquidSky wrote: post #27
bunderbunder wrote: post #10

I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…

>A couple years ago, I was eager for a return to office. There's your first mistake. You're right that recent trends have been bad, but offices have always been like this. There's a reason "this meeting could have been an email" has been a cliche for decades now and even before that the office was generally depicted as a place where you either pretend to work or desperately struggle to get work done in the face of en…

> You're right that recent trends have been bad, but offices have always been like this. There's a reason "this meeting could have been an email" has been a cliche for decades now and even before that the office was generally depicted as a place where you either pretend to work or desperately struggle to get work done in the face of endless pointless bullshit.

What? My workplace pre-covid assigned us 1-2 person offices and had a handful of dedicated meeting rooms. If someone was having a loud conversation in the hallway you'd either close your door or ask them to move to a meeting room. It was almost as easy to focus there and then as it is in my home office now.

The company I'm at now has an open floorplan with no assigned seats. The few employees who are actually in the office are often on calls with people at one of our other locations. There are enough people who do this that there aren't enough meeting rooms for everyone to take a call in private.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#58

Post by TheCoelacanth »

whatever1 wrote: post #15
andrepd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>drive There is your problem. Personal automobiles aren't a feasible method of transportation past a certain population density.

Buses also are useless. Thry routinely waste you hours due to their slowness and inconsistency. The choices really are two: subway (or any dedicated rail thing) or car.

Buses are great as long as providing a good level of service is a priority for transportation planners.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#59

Post by ozim »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #33
DrBazza wrote: post #17

Give me my own office and flexible hours. That’s what I have at home.

Don't forget access to a fridge full of food that you picked, and a separate space to prepare it for lunch if you choose to do so.

My fav perk is having clean toilet and not shared with the people who don't understand why that brush is there on the side. Well maybe they know but they might also be super important managers who don't have time to be decent and not having time to wash hands because they have to make a dump and have 30 sec to get to the next meeting to shake hands firmly to assert dominance.

:D

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#60

Post by betaby »

jmyeet wrote: post #18

For the longest time, we tech workers have convinced ourselves we're special. We believe we can act on our own behalf against our employer on equal footing. We start to believe in the myth of meritocracy. Remember the "Day in the Life" vidoes? When was the last time you saw someone showing their amazing workspace, the free food, the amentities and all that? A few years ago they were everywhere. Now? Nowhere. We are n…

"Remember the "Day in the Life" vidoes? When was the last time you saw someone showing their amazing workspace, the free food, the amentities and all that? A few years ago they were everywhere. Now? Nowhere."

I do remember! Also I was always wondering where those people worked. Perhaps those videos were from FAANG companies ... but most of the developers never worked there! Point is that those videos were not representing anything.

Post reply on HN