Change is hard, but to change we must.
Hmm isn't intellectual ability the ability to adapt to your environment? If you think working from home is nice and you find out it's crap then use your fucking mind.
Working from Home: Why It Sucks
81–90 of 105 posts
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#82Why it sucks for the writer of the blog post? He's an extrovert, and he didn't realize it.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
We try to have work from home friday each week in the winter and move it to work from home thursday for the rest of the year (for after work drinks on friday). More than 3 days a week at home and you start to lose the benefits.
"More than 3 days a week at home and you start to lose the benefits." As someone who has been exclusively working remotely for several years, I'm not so sure about that. I guess it depends what you consider the benefits to be and from which side of the employee/employer fence you're on. Are the benefits that you have a more relaxed and free adult life - in both work and play? Or are you looking for a hack to try to f…
Not having to commute is a big benefit, but of course it's possible for a company to make it so much of a hassle that it's not worth it.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#84I can get away with working from home, but either I don't need much human interaction, or I do need it but I've never had it so I don't know what I'm missing.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much as it's probably true, I absolutely hate that. Somebody once showed me a diagram demonstrating the increased efficiency gained by using a wiki instead of email - but the entire gain would have been nullified if they assumed that rather than entering stuff directly into the wiki, people would upload word documents to the wiki (which the pointy-hairs invariably do).
Just need to write something that automatically converts word docs into new wiki pages. Then the pointy-hairs can upload all they want and everyone else gets some sanity. Don't even try to make the conversion full featured, just rip it plain text. When the boss asks why his charts and headers don't convert over, show him how easy it is to fix that in the wiki. By getting his feet wet this way, eventually he might not…
> When the boss asks why his charts and headers don't convert over, show him how easy it is to fix that in the wiki.
The rational response to that from the PHB's point of view is to ban wikis.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
A major factor in telepresence immersion is eye-contact. http://www.google.com/search?q=telepresence+eye+contact Perhaps someday a YC company will figure out how to inexpensively enable eye-contact over ordinary video chat (teleconferencing).
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/hack_lets_you_look_...
That's the half-silvered mirror solution (for full eye-contact teleconferencing). I was thinking of the other solution: the software-based one that corrects the images in terms of pupil-direction.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#87I did most of my work from home for much of 2008 and there were times when I felt the way this guy did. It took me a while but eventually I realized how much I missed taking a lunch break with my coworkers and getting little comments and suggestions here and there (which occasionally made a big difference or saved me a lot of time). This year I'm making more of an effort to work outside my home even when that's not strictly necessary.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
agreed. I wonder why some people write that way. It's very difficult to write in second person successfully, because as soon as one presents information that is inconsistent with how the actual reader feels, the rest of the argument is nullified. Yes, it sounded silly when the writer tried to speak for me, in particular, when he knows nothing about me.
The pronoun "one" has mostly fallen out of use ("One starts to feel...") and the usual substitute in modern English is "you". It doesn't literally mean that the writer is talking about the reader.
I think in spoken English this is the case. However, using the more formal "one" in writing, even on a blog, is a good way to clear up any misunderstanding a reader might have. Though the use of "you" is more and more accepted in everyday situations, clearly the use of "you" instead of "one" caused some readers of this post some problems. In writing, one should try to be as clear as possible to get one's point across to the widest variety of readers, unless one is trying to obfuscate one's point on purpose.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most important "business" lesson I ever learned: never write a "document" in an email message; write it in Word and attach it instead, to activate the pointy-haired neurotransmitters.
Much as it's probably true, I absolutely hate that. Somebody once showed me a diagram demonstrating the increased efficiency gained by using a wiki instead of email - but the entire gain would have been nullified if they assumed that rather than entering stuff directly into the wiki, people would upload word documents to the wiki (which the pointy-hairs invariably do).
Hence Sharepoint.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
The pronoun "one" has mostly fallen out of use ("One starts to feel...") and the usual substitute in modern English is "you". It doesn't literally mean that the writer is talking about the reader.
I think in spoken English this is the case. However, using the more formal "one" in writing, even on a blog, is a good way to clear up any misunderstanding a reader might have. Though the use of "you" is more and more accepted in everyday situations, clearly the use of "you" instead of "one" caused some readers of this post some problems. In writing, one should try to be as clear as possible to get one's point across…
kragen's point is that most people don't know how or when to do so. I think most of us would agree that it would be best for everyone to suddenly get much better at written English, but it's unlikely to occur.