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Working from home is powering productivity

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Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#41

Post by purple-leafy »

tomrod wrote: post #31
purple-leafy wrote: post #24

Work from home makes me LOYAL to a company, and makes me work my arse off! If you want to keep good employees, give them agency. I do hybrid, I’m half-half from home and in the office. I work so hard when I work from home, and I’m so happy when I work from home, my desk is setup how I need, I get free coffee, I can listen to music, my dog sleeps on the bed. Most importantly, more of the work gets done. I think the op…

What do you do?

I’m fortunate to be a software engineer, I have about 4yoe and mainly work on frontend code.

But it’s been a very long road from being a university dropout, to getting an Electrical Engineering degree, and then transitioning to Software mostly in my spare time

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#42

Post by lokar »

ryandrake wrote: post #17
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the (US) military, the sergeants run the army. NCOs are highly-trained, and have been the secret of managing battlefield chaos, for generations. They don't do strategy, but they do tactics, like nobody's business, and are often highly valuable input into development of strategies. They are given tremendous agency, and are highly trained. The military does a great job of training and retaining highly-experienced, a…

> First-line managers have a similar role, but they are treated like garbage by their superiors, and consider their position a "necessary evil," towards higher ranks. This is because most companies don't have a promotion track above "Senior Software Engineer" that doesn't involve people-management, which is an entirely different job. It's as if you ran a restaurant and in order for your highest rated chef to get prom…

When I did a check in about 2018, almost all (like, all but 2-3) of the Distinguished engineers at Google were actually Sr Directors with vanity titles (DE was considered better then Sr Dir). Most 50+ person orgs with multiple managers working under them.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#43

Post by tikhonj »

l33tbro wrote: post #27

I despair a little at this. If I can do my job at home, then surely somebody can do it in the global south in tandem with AI for peanuts. Client-facing stuff gets centralised to a smaller team of specialists, and the ship gets much tighter. How long until megacorps and SMEs actually execute this reality? The management class and their unnecessary underlings like me have only been so resilient because companies are st…

I mean, if you can do your job in-office, then surely somebody in the global can do it in their office? Or what if somebody could do your job in a branch office rather than in HQ?

Is your only differentiation really just being able to physically interact with management?

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#44

Post by kvmet »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #34
nmstoker wrote: post #16

It's good to see some serious arguments for WFH. Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence, often it's something they're very grumpy about (hardly the best state of mind for good judgement) and often based on the assumption that company productivity is based on workers doing what they do (usually far fro…

> Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence In some cases, the pressure is also coming from external to the company, from cities and VCs and similar who care about the commercial real-estate value of now-abandoned offices.

Is this actually happening? I have seen this idea thrown out a lot online but it always feels like a conspiracy theory to me (akin to "fine art is a tax write-off")

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#45

Post by Terr_ »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #34
nmstoker wrote: post #16

It's good to see some serious arguments for WFH. Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence, often it's something they're very grumpy about (hardly the best state of mind for good judgement) and often based on the assumption that company productivity is based on workers doing what they do (usually far fro…

> Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence In some cases, the pressure is also coming from external to the company, from cities and VCs and similar who care about the commercial real-estate value of now-abandoned offices.

> real-estate value

Separately but simultaneously, there are often local tax-benefits which depend on the company "creating jobs", and that's often defined in a way that means butts-in-offices downtown.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#46

Post by coredog64 »

lokar wrote: post #38
ip26 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter argument: if we accept the military example as doing leadership/management well, you can say the same about their career track. Far as I can tell, there’s no “IC” track above Corporal, which has an average age of 21yo.

IMO the bigger difference is there is no direct path from NCO to officer. If you are enlisted and you want to be an officer, there is no standard path for that, no promotion from NCO to office. And officers never serve as enlisted solders. Fighting and leading are two different jobs, done by different groups of people I sometimes wonder if the police would be better off with that model.

Enlisted =>college (via GI Bill) => ROTC/OCS

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#47

Post by criddell »

purple-leafy wrote: post #24

Work from home makes me LOYAL to a company, and makes me work my arse off! If you want to keep good employees, give them agency. I do hybrid, I’m half-half from home and in the office. I work so hard when I work from home, and I’m so happy when I work from home, my desk is setup how I need, I get free coffee, I can listen to music, my dog sleeps on the bed. Most importantly, more of the work gets done. I think the op…

I think framing the WFH argument in terms of productivity is a bad idea. It’s difficult to win that argument and it might not even be true.

Instead, call it a benefit, like paid vacation or health insurance.

Nobody argues that employers contributing to an employees 401(k) plan is good for productivity. They do it to attract and retain talent.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#48

Post by staunton »

nostrademons wrote: post #28
toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle > A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

A corollary is that they existing big-tech companies will never embrace remote work. You need to start new companies which are remote-first and then replace big tech with them.

I don't think that's a useful generalization. It's pretty clear that company culture changes over time (in tandem with changing management and workforce).

The point of the Planck quote is that many people (especially the "important" people) have large egos and therefore (among other reasons) are unwilling or unable to change their minds and learn new things. This then significantly hinders progress.

The equivalent to your claim in science would be something like "particle physics cannot change, you need to let it die and start a new scientific discipline" (I guess you'll find some people who think that but I don't).

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#49

Post by hu3 »

l33tbro wrote: post #27

I despair a little at this. If I can do my job at home, then surely somebody can do it in the global south in tandem with AI for peanuts. Client-facing stuff gets centralised to a smaller team of specialists, and the ship gets much tighter. How long until megacorps and SMEs actually execute this reality? The management class and their unnecessary underlings like me have only been so resilient because companies are st…

I think you're onto something.

Even Indians are losing their IT jobs to Vietnamese. [1]

The squeeze is real.

Good time to start a business I guess.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1eckee9/oh...

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#50

Post by finnh »

kvmet wrote: post #44
JoshTriplett wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence In some cases, the pressure is also coming from external to the company, from cities and VCs and similar who care about the commercial real-estate value of now-abandoned offices.

Is this actually happening? I have seen this idea thrown out a lot online but it always feels like a conspiracy theory to me (akin to "fine art is a tax write-off")

I think it explains some of Amazon's choices, as they made multibillion dollar bets on office space and real estate in Seattle.
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