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

Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

buzzfeednews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#101

Post by cmrdporcupine »

ar_lan wrote: post #64
blhack wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget about the commercial real estate bubble pop, and potentially a massive pump in prices of family homes as a result. I think that investors are going to be moving their money out of commercial real estate, and into residential. Edit: to be clear: I don't live in the Bay Area, and I think the housing prices there could go either way: 1) People spend more time in their homes and spend an even larger portion…

I would guess the opposite. If more Bay Area companies allow WFH, there's less demand here.

That only works if companies allow for 100% WFH.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#102

Post by robbyking »

the_watcher wrote: post #44
robbyking wrote: post #18

I work for a pretty well-known tech company, and my hypothesis is that we'll switch to a mostly at-home work week, where most people WFH 3 or 4 days a week with one day of the week being designated as a "meeting day" where everyone is in the office. I don't think this will happen because of people are worried about virus transmission, but instead because most people like working from home and we've proven we can be j…

I disagree that this is a likely outcome. For many people, this is a worst of both worlds - still requires all the costs of living within commuting distance of your employer (particularly for SFBA and NYC) and likely shrinks the average size/perks of the office you commute to. Partial remote doesn't seem to solve any problem in a way that is any better than the status quo.

I live in Portland, though; people live here because they love Portland, not because of the tech scene.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#103

Post by MattGaiser »

seemslegit wrote: post #80

A blurred distinction between the home and the workplace could also have legal implications for side projects, 'everything you make during employment period belongs to us' clauses can sometimes be punched through or voided but it's harder to do if you can't show a clear work time and resources vs. personal time and resources boundary.

Or equipment. Am I now liable for preventing my home network from being hacked?

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#104

Post by VectorLock »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #88

If the big tech companies embraced this, one of the big side-effects would be easing of the Bay Area housing crunch. If tech workers did not have to commute to work, they could move to other areas where the housing prices are cheaper while still working for the tech companies. As the demand eases on the housing, prices will fall.

I could see companies not going 100% remote but maybe having 1 day a week in the office. You might not be able to work from anywhere, but it would allow expansion into areas that aren't a soul crushing commute 5 days a week.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#105

Post by jaggederest »

VectorLock wrote: post #70
robbyking wrote: post #18

I work for a pretty well-known tech company, and my hypothesis is that we'll switch to a mostly at-home work week, where most people WFH 3 or 4 days a week with one day of the week being designated as a "meeting day" where everyone is in the office. I don't think this will happen because of people are worried about virus transmission, but instead because most people like working from home and we've proven we can be j…

Talking to some of my team and coworkers the main thing I hear is they miss face to face interaction with the people they work with, and I do as well. I would like to see the 1 day a week "meeting day" but really try to focus on socializing than "this is the day we do all our meetings" since those seem to be working just as well with video conference. Maybe restrict it to things like 1:1s and group discussions. Havin…

I've done this in the past - I live in Portland, and worked with a firm in Mount Vernon, WA, which is about three and a half hours north, one way. I didn't go in every week, more like a few days a month staying in a hotel, but I found it very agreeable. I quite enjoyed having a few days to collaborate intensively and then private time to finish the detail work.

That said, I'm notably introverted and happy as a clam during quarantine, more or less, so I'm probably not representative of the country as a whole. Of people currently working remote, I think we'll see about 20% of people who won't want to go back into offices. For my own selfish purposes I'm really hoping for a paradigm shift towards more remote work, but I accept it doesn't work well for some people.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#106

Post by ccktlmazeltov »

VectorLock wrote: post #70
robbyking wrote: post #18

I work for a pretty well-known tech company, and my hypothesis is that we'll switch to a mostly at-home work week, where most people WFH 3 or 4 days a week with one day of the week being designated as a "meeting day" where everyone is in the office. I don't think this will happen because of people are worried about virus transmission, but instead because most people like working from home and we've proven we can be j…

Talking to some of my team and coworkers the main thing I hear is they miss face to face interaction with the people they work with, and I do as well. I would like to see the 1 day a week "meeting day" but really try to focus on socializing than "this is the day we do all our meetings" since those seem to be working just as well with video conference. Maybe restrict it to things like 1:1s and group discussions. Havin…

That's what I did in my previous job, go there once a week at most and only socialize and goof around, no work

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#107

Post by apengwin »

fermienrico wrote: post #85

Then why pay $200k for a software engineer in the valley when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary? The question I have is what portion of the $200k salary is 1) due to the raw talent of the individual 2) because they live in the bay area.

It's the rate the market dictates.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#108

Post by gen220 »

bradlys wrote: post #75
the_watcher wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that this is a likely outcome. For many people, this is a worst of both worlds - still requires all the costs of living within commuting distance of your employer (particularly for SFBA and NYC) and likely shrinks the average size/perks of the office you commute to. Partial remote doesn't seem to solve any problem in a way that is any better than the status quo.

I agree. I would quit. This basically forces employees to get another room as an office. If my employers pays for it, fine. But if they don’t, it’s bs that I’ll have to continue to work from my living room because we don’t have a dedicated office space. It’s driving both me and my SO crazy because we want separate spaces to do our work but we are in a studio/open 1-bedroom.

I prefer working from home, but I also totally agree with you. Especially since they got rid of the uncompensated business expense deductions for individuals in the tax code, they're really just outsourcing the expense of maintaining an office.

However, I fully believe I can build a home office that's better (for me) than most employers can, at a fraction of the budget. It's a more efficient solution than a centralized office, but it's coming out of my pocket and not theirs, so it hurts me more.

Of course, your direct complaint seems to be the square footage, not the hardware (desks, etc). That's a tougher one to solve for, because larger square footage is opex instead of capex, and it'll be more challenging to get your employer to part with opex dollars.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#109

Post by seemslegit »

MattGaiser wrote: post #103
seemslegit wrote: post #80

A blurred distinction between the home and the workplace could also have legal implications for side projects, 'everything you make during employment period belongs to us' clauses can sometimes be punched through or voided but it's harder to do if you can't show a clear work time and resources vs. personal time and resources boundary.

Or equipment. Am I now liable for preventing my home network from being hacked?

Good news ! You don't have to be - just allow your work IT a full control of your home network and they'll have it secured to corporate standards !

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#110

Post by sitkack »

jekriro7 wrote: post #78
Ididntdothis wrote: post #9

It would be good if more tech companies embraced this. I bet if they need tools for themselves we’ll see a lot of progress in remote collaboration tools. To make this work I wonder how executives will adapt. In my company the higher you go up the chain, the more they want face to face communication. I guess most top executives are people persons so not seeing things like body language or using body language takes awa…

It would be good if AWS and GCE were leveraged by workers at home as generic data centers to store their private data Working on a UI and server for just that. Plug an API key for a cloud provider into the UI which will help users move data from their laptop to a private bucket for example, or spinup basic infra, enable sharing with other users accounts for opt-in data collection Sell or donate access to specific dat…

Wasm and weed is a powerful drug.
Post reply on HN