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Let employees work from home

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Re: Let employees work from home

#121

Post by dbingham »

besogne wrote: post #70
jusuchin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's different strokes for different folks. Personally, I feel I can communicate much more efficiently via chat/messaging mediums than email. Chatting, in my opinion, at least in a late 20 something (27 year old)'s mind, emulates a real conversation where if you don't respond it's essentially ignoring the other person. If you have a bigger thought, sure you can type it out and get that message to multiple peo…

Chatting favours subjects that only require a short span of attention. At the same time, anything of real value will take a minimum length and complexity to explain. That is why the output of chat/messaging tends to be worth little to nothing. Chat/messaging is something appreciated by demographics who do not have anything useful to say anyway. To an important extent, it is the same kind of people who have a hard tim…

What an incredibly arrogant and conceited thing to say. As someone who favors chat this amounts to a personal attack on me and everyone like me -- a personal attack completely devoid of supporting evidence.

I've worked at two different remote companies over the past 5 years. One was failing the other is succeeding and growing. Chat played little role in either case, it was simply one of the chosen methods of communication. One method in a tool box that also included email and video chat.

In both companies, chat functioned very well as the stand in for most office conversations. We only fall back on video chat when we find ourselves talking past each other in chat and need the higher bandwidth of voice communication to clear up the confusion. We almost never use email in either case.

I've also used it in several non-profit organizations I've served on the board of and as an organizing tool among local activists. In all cases, it has served me well, allowing conversations that could span from exchanges of long, in depth arguments or explanations to quick exchanges of information or Q&As.

Chat is a tool. It doesn't favor or dictate anything. It's all in how you use it.

If you find yourself continuously having low value conversations over chat, I think that says far more about you than it does about chat.

Re: Let employees work from home

#122

Post by nzonbi »

Imagine how much energy the world would save if most people where working from home. Electricity, transport fuel. How much less pollution and traffic jams. How much less need to build cars and transport systems. How much extra time to enjoy life would people have by not commuting.

With so huge positives. I don't understand why not more research is put into work-from home.

Re: Let employees work from home

#123

Post by JenMcCown »

rmah wrote: post #5

This article essentially boiled down to: I want X. A few companies already offer X. You should offer X too. There are sometimes advantages to offering full or partial work-from-home options to employees. For some projects and company cultures, it can work well. But honestly, this blog post was a rather shallow argument in favor of it.

Ha. I wrote the article. I'm actually a self employed consultant and company owner who works from home full time, but I spent 15 years in offices. So you have a point, in that I REALLY would have like far more work from home. But I'm also looking at this from a business owner (who's likely to have employees within a few years), and what will work best.

And IMO, there are far more advantages to companies offering WFH than there are challenges.

Re: Let employees work from home

#124

Post by pavel_lishin »

athenot wrote: post #68
barrkel wrote: post #45

I worked remotely, from home, for 5 years. These days, I work mostly in the office, with a 40 minute commute each way, despite the option for occasional working from home. There's a few reasons to prefer working in the office. The single biggest one is the hard delimiting of the work day; when I'm not in the office, I'm not working, I'm not available on email or chat, and unless it's an exceptional situation, nobody…

> The days when people were trained on newsgroup netiquette are long gone. That is why it is hard to do decisions by email. Also, poor thread representation by email clients doesn't help. Chat has the potential of being used efficiently, where arguments are stripped of their emotion and converge faster to a point without rambling. To your point, chat can be made high-bandwidth, with multi-sentence points made in a si…

> Chat has the potential of being used efficiently, where arguments are stripped of their emotion and converge faster to a point without rambling.

So does face-to-face conversation. If your coworkers manage to put away all personal feelings, emotions and opinions when behind a keyboard, I salute you - mine, myself included, do not, and instead of actually making your feelings clear through signals our brains have been optimized to understand for millennia, we either have to explicitly specify things, or just guess what the other person means beyond the ascii.

Re: Let employees work from home

#126

Post by camelNotation »

kbart wrote: post #22
camelNotation wrote: post #4

I think WFH is a great idea, but until we can do multi-user video conferencing over the average home internet connection, it just isn't going to be as good as in-person interactions. However, once we can reliably see one another's faces in HD and share screens at the same time, it might even be superior to sitting next to someone and having them try to look over your shoulder as you show them something or ask a quest…

"average home internet connection" is varied factor. Were I live there's no problem with HD streaming, but working from home is still an exception not the rule.

The fact that it is a varied factor is exactly the issue I'm point out. It needs to no longer be varied.

Re: Let employees work from home

#127

Post by jstandard »

overgard wrote: post #95
jasode wrote: post #7

>Objections to work from home fall apart Essays from workers like Jen McCown isn't going to work. What works is to have massively successful businesses that beat the competition because their employees work remotely . Since no multi-billion dollar business has demonstrated that specific cause & effect, the idea doesn't gain traction. Yes, businesses like Basecamp and Automattic have remote workers but I'm talking abo…

You could make this argument about any benefit, and it would be equally silly. "Blog posts about company provided snacks arent going to move the needle, we need a company that is massively successful because of free snacks before people take notice!"

Silly as it may be, it's how things work. People look for large signs of validation before adopting things they might not agree with or are hesitant to try. Moreso as the stakes (monetary and otherwise) grow larger.

Re: Let employees work from home

#128

Post by mellery451 »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #47

I like working from home sometimes. A line is crossed for me when a company goes 100% remote. I would go crazy working from home day in and day out. I actually did have a borderline nervous breakdown years ago because I couldn't take being alone so much of the day. In fact if I have to work from home full time again I would pay to have a membership in a co-working space just to be around other humans. I think work fr…

> I say let people work from home but make sure they have the option of an office.

...or provide a stipend to be used to help pay for local co-working spaces, if that's your preference. I can certainly understand how some people might need alternatives to the monotony of WFH, but making everyone commute to some crowded business district/downtown is whole other set of nuisances and inefficiencies.

Re: Let employees work from home

#129

Post by JenMcCown »

II2II wrote: post #49

To The Author: Please show us some numbers to back up the claims? The few numbers that you do provide either fail to support your argument or can be construed to contradict it. (I am thinking of: everybody wants to the option to work from home followed by 35% would change jobs for the option to work from home, even if it is part-time.) Also, anecdotes don't cut it. You can find counter examples to almost anything tha…

Hi there, author here. The article actually links to a NY Times article and the Gallup study that it cites. But remember, this is an opinion piece. I've been in the industry for 15 years...hang on, no, it's 20 years, but who's counting? And except for those stats and linked articles, these are my observations and opinions.

I can't write an article that will convince 100% of the people. A book deal and a set of long discussions wouldn't convince 100%. If you disagree with me, that's fine. I spent my time knocking down the most common arguments I've heard, and a little time talking up the observed benefits.

One final point: I think companies should take "what people want" as part of their career into account! Even big business doesn't completely dismiss trends in the workplace - which are indeed driven, in part by what workers demand. More places offer considerations for ergonomics, pleasant work spaces, tea and coffee rooms, snacks, health programs, and so on. This is just one more thing, and this is my small contribution to the talks.

Re: Let employees work from home

#130

Post by JenMcCown »

darkstar999 wrote: post #107

I think these arguments are missing a big aspect of successful companies: culture. How can you have good office culture if everyone works from home?

You're missing the point that WFH doesn't mean "all employees must WFH full time".

WFH is everything from "I gotta go home, the kid's sick" to "I'm going to WFH Wednesdays to concentrate", to "see y'all online!"

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