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Working from home is powering productivity

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Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#391

Post by _gabe_ »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #281
J_Shelby_J wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good comment and I had to think about it for a minute. I do agree with you in practicality, but I also think in person works because most people flat out can’t or won’t take the time to communicate effectively in writing. Put them in a room and they’re suddenly forced to do it. But that said, just because most people can’t effectively communicate and instead use async communications like slack zombies is no…

For the vast majority of human existence the majority of communication was done verbally and in person. We’ve never communicated this much with text and most of that increase has probably come in the past, what, 20 years? I think rather than people being lazy/inept it’s more a case of our brains struggling to adapt to a way of communication that is thousands of years newer than speech.

I really don’t understand what you’re saying here. Letters have existed for literally thousands of years at this point and people were able to communicate effectively through that. Several countries were founded and destroyed with coordination through written communication.

I know plenty of people that still study the letters that were used to communicate while founding the United States. It seems to me that the last 20 years has led to a massive decrease in the effectiveness of written communication because people don’t have to be clear or concise anymore.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#392

Post by mattpallissard »

steveBK123 wrote: post #389
jandrewrogers wrote: post #260

I think a lot of people are talking past each other. I’ve mostly WFH since long before the pandemic, in many different capacities at many companies. A lot of people have tunnel vision and the reality is more nuanced than most allow. For IC work that requires minimal collaboration, WFH is often more productive. Fewer interruptions, more focus. However, when the role requires detailed collaboration and regular interact…

Agreed its not black&white, but theres more factors than IC. For example I think all new grads need to be house trained with some in-office period, as well as have made enough money/been subsidized to actually have a proper WFH setup. 22 year olds hunched over a 14" laptop screen on their nightstand ain't it. For people who've done 10/15/20 years in office, we know how to manage our time remotely, and many of us have…

I always tell my friends and colleagues new to remote work that remote, async collaboration is a skill to be learned.

You have to take a thought and distill it down to a diagram or written word before you share it. Personally, If I can't do that it tells me that my idea is still half baked.

It also teaches you to avoid throwing out incomplete ideas or asking simple questions you could answer yourself as the rtt for a response in a distributed team is too high.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#393

Post by pjc50 »

noch wrote: post #348
pjc50 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you prioritize company success in a world where the company has zero loyalty to you ? You trade off your lifestyle in return for no equity and get made redundant at zero notice? Why would you do that? > Most of your employees think of your company's success and their lifestyle as competing interests. There are only so many hours in the day.

> Why would you prioritize company success in a world […] Exactly. If you don't want to work, or don't care about your work, that's fine. There are other people who care and want to work, and care about their colleagues, and they'll show up or the company will go bust. > Why would you do that? Everyone has to figure that out for themselves. It's the same as asking "why do I work here?"

I'm thinking of the games industry: https://theconversation.com/the-video-game-industry-is-boomi...

You have people who care about their colleagues, care about the product, want to work, often crunch voluntarily, the company makes a profit, and they still get laid off. That is .. well, it's sustainable in that you can always find more fresh grads willing to work in games, at the expense of leaving a trail of burned out and disgruntled former employees behind you, but it's also driving unionization.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#394

Post by akoboldfrying »

chasd00 wrote: post #388
akoboldfrying wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think bosses overwhelmingly want RTO? I think they want it because they fear productivity losses that mean lower profits, and ultimately lead to the threat of becoming uncompetitive. If you agree with that, is your position that these fears are irrational (because in your view, no such productivity loss would occur)?

Bosses want rto because they’re paying rent for empty office space. I’ve been wfh for a decade in the consulting business, only time I’m not wfh is meeting a client. My teams are distributed across the world and our stock price says wfh is fine. Bosses want rto because they can’t stand paying rent for empty space.

You may be right that a big part of it is the psychological weight of that sunk cost. But if that were the only reason, there would be an easy win-win: Rent less office space and let people WFH.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#395

Post by pjc50 »

noch wrote: post #383
benterix wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sorry you've had bad experiences. No, actually I haven't. I just have many colleagues who share their feelings with me. In my niche, all best-paid positions are remote only, I basically cooperate with teams from different continents, it's very rewarding. If someone tried to offer me a job forcing me to sit in an open plan office, I would laugh in their face, it seems so ridiculously absurd and unnecessary. The…

> No, actually I haven't. Ah. Well, second hand anecdotes are certainly appreciated. Thanks for sharing. > The possibility of WFH (for those who want it) is one of the best that happened to the working class since 5-day workweek. Does "working class" have a different meaning today? When I entered the job market it meant "blue collar" or manual labourer. You seem to be indicating that you're what used to be called "kn…

Anyone who is dependent on labour rather than capital for their income is technically working class. The Marxist classifications don't really work for knowledge workers or professionals.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#396

Post by LaserToy »

steveBK123 wrote: post #382
CalRobert wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this can be a race to the bottom as companies with wfh are driven out of business by those without

Or the opposite - companies with the most draconian and rigid RTO mandates end up with high attrition. Anyone who can work anywhere else does so, and the company becomes a collection of misfits over time. Currently the hard-RTO companies in the news are clearly doing it for silent layoffs reasons as there are simultaneous leaks of 5-figure attrition targets. Maybe a strong FTC/DOJ stance on antitrust, plus the top-do…

Companies need to make money. High performers will go to companies that make tons of money, even if relo to Sahara is needed

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#397

Post by tsimionescu »

User23 wrote: post #366
tsimionescu wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a single person do both a technical job and people and project management only scales up to size of company. There's only so much time in a 40h week, and dealing with certain problems means you can't deal with others, and as the size of the project and the size of the team increases, it will rapidly become impossible to do all of these if it's not your 100% full-time job.

This is pretty much exactly the mindset that I’m criticizing, yeah. In reality, in a well structured organization, someone leading a pizza team is analogous to a developer running five highly advanced AIs to help him build something. Sure sometimes he’ll choose to replace or upgrade one or more of the models, but that’s incidental to the real job, which is delivering.

First of all, leading five people is not analogous to running five AIs. The needs of people are very very different from the needs of AIs.

Secondly, a five person team is not going to deliver, say, an OS. So a company or community building an OS needs way more than five people, and needs to coordinate between five person teams, and to coordinate problems that appear between the employees/members, which will not be uncommon once your project has a few dozens of people working on it.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#398

Post by LaserToy »

benterix wrote: post #377
noch wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know what actually happens? […] A bunch of disgruntled employees who don't give a fuck about your company because of the way you treated them. I'm sorry you've had bad experiences. I hope you'll heal and be okay or find work that makes you feel appreciated and rewards you. I remember being stealth fired simply because I was never in the office and those who were assumed "he doesn't really work here anyway". Out…

> I'm sorry you've had bad experiences. No, actually I haven't. I just have many colleagues who share their feelings with me. In my niche, all best-paid positions are remote only, I basically cooperate with teams from different continents, it's very rewarding. If someone tried to offer me a job forcing me to sit in an open plan office, I would laugh in their face, it seems so ridiculously absurd and unnecessary. The…

How much are you paid? Total comp?

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#399

Post by steveBK123 »

LaserToy wrote: post #396
steveBK123 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the opposite - companies with the most draconian and rigid RTO mandates end up with high attrition. Anyone who can work anywhere else does so, and the company becomes a collection of misfits over time. Currently the hard-RTO companies in the news are clearly doing it for silent layoffs reasons as there are simultaneous leaks of 5-figure attrition targets. Maybe a strong FTC/DOJ stance on antitrust, plus the top-do…

Companies need to make money. High performers will go to companies that make tons of money, even if relo to Sahara is needed

Sure but it's often a cycle right, the high performers go to innovative companies that create lots of money.

The companies that make lots of money then end up being softer & more extravagant with their employee (ahem, GOOG and a lot of Mag7/FAANG) until some equilibrium point where they're so soft they lose their edge.

Then a new up&comer rises and the cycle repeats.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#400

Post by abustamam »

ajuc wrote: post #352
CalRobert wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this can be a race to the bottom as companies with wfh are driven out of business by those without

> Unfortunately this can be a race to the bottom This works as an argument against 8h work day and 5-day work week too. Ultimately if something is better for the society (and WFH obviously is - commute time, carbon footprint, land prices, housing crisis - it helps with almost everything) - we should just force companies to use it by regulation, so that there's no "race" in that regard cause the conditions are the sam…

I agree that WFH is better for society, but anecdotally, it probably caused more of a housing crisis here in CA. Folks took their bay area salaries and moved to cheaper suburbs and totally wrecked the RE market. And I have read stories of similar things happening in other places that techies flocked to, like Austin, though I don't think it's necessarily fair to blame that on remote work because there were other factors in play there (politics for example)
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