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Working from home is powering productivity

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Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#431

Post by benterix »

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…

> As a business owner however, the question is: what is best for the business?

It is very simple: you need best people. In tech industry, people are smart, they know how to optimize things, and they rarely believe in "company values" bullshit. You can choose from a limited talent pool. If you give yourself and them a choice, including the WFH option, you statistically increase your chances of finding the best people. (Also the ones "prioritizing company interest", provided such people exist at all.)

Also, if your company is in a remote area or is in a very specific niche, you basically might not even have that much choice.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#432

Post by noch »

benterix wrote: post #431
noch wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> As a business owner however, the question is: what is best for the business? It is very simple: you need best people. In tech industry, people are smart, they know how to optimize things, and they rarely believe in "company values" bullshit. You can choose from a limited talent pool. If you give yourself and them a choice, including the WFH option, you statistically increase your chances of finding the best people.…

> It is very simple: you need best people

Would that it were so simple! But are you saying this from your experience hiring for teams that execute well?

> you statistically increase your chances of finding the best people

Do you have statistics proving this? Please share data.

> they rarely believe in "company values" bullshit

Are you honestly saying that in all the interviews you've attended, you never ask and you've never been asked "why do you want to work here?" And if the question was asked the answer had nothing to do with the company's mission? That's amazing.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#433

Post by pjc50 »

noch wrote: post #421
pjc50 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The Marxist classifications don't really work for knowledge workers or professionals. I see. Thanks for that clarification. Most of the people I've worked with earn money by running fleets of servers and software that do the work that generates income. It feels weird calling them "working class."

> earn money by running fleets of servers and software that do the work that generates income

If they're owning the servers and/or software, that's a capital asset. That puts them in the "petit bourgeois" category, like small shopkeepers.

If they don't own the capital assets they're economically dependent on, that roughly corresponds to sharecropping. We've had a few stories on here of what happens when the landlord decides to obliterate such businesses by changing the terms.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#434

Post by User23 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #397
User23 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 un…

Yes that’s how analogies work, they’re not exact equivalents.

The point was to illustrate that the actual value creating job of every employee from the bottom up to the CEO is fundamentally delivering products or services. An organization that takes its eye off that ball and hires people specialized in “people management” is well on its way to the remarkably common decline and fall of large corporations. If you hire people whose specialty is interpersonal drama then guess what you’re liable to get.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#435

Post by closeparen »

DrBazza wrote: post #307
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…

WFH is best for focused work. Office is best for collaboration. I'm not sure I've found a tool that works for collaboration like a whiteboard. Digital solutions just never really worked in our company and we tried a few. On the flip side, open source projects function just fine with 100% remote work in different time zones. One thing I found with WFH pre-and-post Covid is the the 'Feynman moment'- "If you cannot expl…

I think this is backwards. It's much easier to join Zoom meetings from home, and while you are on these meetings everyone can see that you're giving them at least partial attention. While heads-down work at home requires more discipline from you and more of a leap of faith from management.

In the office, quiet spaces to take a meeting from are scarce, but it's better established that your unscheduled time is actually spent on work.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#436

Post by CalRobert »

abustamam wrote: post #400
ajuc wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 facto…

Isn’t that improving the housing shortage in the bay?

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#437

Post by rad_gruchalski »

vbezhenar wrote: post #283
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…

It might be efficient to work 60 hours week. Doesn't mean we should agree to it. Remote work improves quality of life. I don't care about company KPI or efficiency, I care about my own well-being first and foremost, as long as I have a choice. Companies should adapt and if it means that their efficiency will decrease, so be it.

> I don't care about company KPI or efficiency, I care about my own well-being first and foremost, as long as I have a choice.

This is a double edged sword. You don’t care about the company, you care for yourself. Your company sees that and gives you a certain treatment. If you don’t care just quit?

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#438

Post by LaserToy »

benterix wrote: post #430
LaserToy wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much are you paid? Total comp?

I'm reluctant to provide details as these days you can be doxxed by just one's writing style but I manage to save 85% of my salary and rent a private 50sqm office with all amenities just for myself.

Was trying to gauge whether you are underpaid because you only accept remote work.

Economy will be the one that will determines the ultimate outcome, especially for tech companies, as they compete globally

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#439

Post by alphazard »

sevensor wrote: post #163
alphazard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing the best kind of manager for two reasons: 1. They understand what their reports do, can mentor the less experienced ones, and are a competent peer to the more experienced ones, rather than an obstacle. 2. If they turn out to be bad managers, there is a low stakes, no hard feelings, path for them to go back to being an IC. There is a huge aversion to firing people, so bad managers who can't do anyth…

Strange that you’d say that. What I’ve seen is that promoting homegrown ICs to line management is a favored strategy of nontechnical MBAs in upper management. Any large organization is bureaucratic. Given the intensely bureaucratic record of communist governments, your invocation of Marxist rhetoric here is frankly laughable. What promoting inexperienced managers from within does is place them at a tremendous informa…

> he used the word "class", let me find Marxism in my dialogue tree.

If you were unaware of the term "bureaucratic class", it's not a pro-marxist shibboleth. It refers to the population of aging white collar workers without useful skills, usually in management positions. They can be found parasitizing most large companies. If their incompetence could be reliably detected, it would trigger a massive unemployment crisis. They are often unwilling or unable to learn new skills; the productive skills that originally got them in the door have atrophied or become irrelevant.

Any organization as dysfunctional as you describe isn't going to be meaningfully affected by choice of managers. If politics are that prevalent, then the company is coasting on laurels, and it's not really about getting anything done to expand the pie. It's about in-fighting over the predictable, fixed-sized pie that comes in every quarter.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#440

Post by itohihiyt »

albedoa wrote: post #427
itohihiyt wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's silly and pedantic to assume we're talking about the thing plainly stated in both the title and body of the article, then yes I am. Now if you're actual stance is that when someone says WFH you include all remote work then we are clearly talking about two different things. In which case it should be plainly stated. As it stands it just seems to me you were moving the goalposts. For clarity WFH when I say it m…

[flagged]

You started by moving the goalposts, then set up strawman arguments, and now resorting to ad hominem attacks. Pathetic really.

But I stand corrected, apparently: WFH != WFH. Good to know.

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