A recent poll of employees who are working remotely • Hacker News Board

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#121

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

IMTDb wrote: post #79

mabbo wrote: post #26

Simply put, if my employer told me I needed to be in the office more than 5 days per month, I would find a new employer. I'm more productive than ever. I'm happier than ever. I'm eating healthier. I sleep better. My marriage is stronger. My finances are kicking ass. I won't give this up.

Too take the exact opposite view : Simply put, if my employer told me I needed to setup zoom calls every time I need to talk to someone more than 5 days per month, I would find a new employer. I'm less productive than ever. I'm more depressed than ever. I'm eating poorly and drinking more. I almost don't sleep anymore. I just want to spend few hours by myself instead of being constantly around my family members. My f…

It’s almost as if different people have very different preferences and companies should provide flexibility to work in whatever way you prefer and are most productive.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#122

Post by ghaff » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

alextheparrot wrote: post #86

sharkweek wrote: post #73

My partner works in operations for [fairly large company]. Her job is to min/max space use, organize for hiring pushes, keep the office space humming, revamp existing space as needed, plan out new space... etc. etc. etc. It's an interesting job, she's probably the person you're pissed at when your desk gets seemingly randomly moved to another floor. Right before COVID, she was managing a HUGE densification project to…

This really is the worst of both worlds for the employees. Employees are still bound to a physical location, but you also have to maintain a home office and heterogenous communications stack [0]. Also, coordinating who is in the office when is a nightmare and can often lead to oversubscribed days. The only utility I can see is if you need to run for appointments that are easier to do when working from home, but this…

I'm not sure it's quite worst of both worlds. One of my company's local offices would be a 90ish minute commute. That's doable for a day a week but not really sustainable a lot more frequently than that. (I used to have another job with a similar commute; it was rough on a regular basis even if I didn't go in many days.)

You can definitely increase the radius of where you can live but you're right that you can't go live in a mountain town.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#123

Post by throw8932894 » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #74

throw8932894 wrote: post #44

My country has new rule about minimal square space per employee. Capacity of our office is now reduced to 20%. 80% employees have to work from home, they do not fit into our office. If this rule is permanent, companies may not be able to afford office space. WFH may become "new normal" bcos it is only thing company can afford. In old days, flu spread in office like wild fire. Companies outsourced negative externaliti…

> Now we have way more transmissible viruses and probably new regulations. That’s incorrect and largely irrelevant. We have one virus that’s more dangerous, but not necessarily more transmissible than the flu, measles, or the common cold (and demonstrably less transmissible than many viruses). Unless you are of the irrational belief that we have somehow reached a point in history when serial deadly pandemics are the…

I think we are way past rationality. I do not see how we can go back to normal.

Hygiene rules will change, and companies have to adapt.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#124

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

pjettter wrote: post #78

For some, WFH is more attractive and more productive than for others. But why does it have to be an either or? There are advantages with sitting next to colleagues. There are advantages with being able to skip the commute and being able to concentrate at home. Ideally, someone would choose what's most productive, which is probably a mix of WFH and working on site.

Yea, I don’t think the WFH advocates are proposing “mandatory remote work.” All we want is the option. It’s the WFO folks that are saying “we want to WFO and we want to make everyone do it too!”

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#125

Post by dbcurtis » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 8:51 PM UTC

alextheparrot wrote: post #86

sharkweek wrote: post #73

My partner works in operations for [fairly large company]. Her job is to min/max space use, organize for hiring pushes, keep the office space humming, revamp existing space as needed, plan out new space... etc. etc. etc. It's an interesting job, she's probably the person you're pissed at when your desk gets seemingly randomly moved to another floor. Right before COVID, she was managing a HUGE densification project to…

This really is the worst of both worlds for the employees. Employees are still bound to a physical location, but you also have to maintain a home office and heterogenous communications stack [0]. Also, coordinating who is in the office when is a nightmare and can often lead to oversubscribed days. The only utility I can see is if you need to run for appointments that are easier to do when working from home, but this…

Meh. I started my current job during pandemic. Some weeks I am in 100%, others zero. I have a desk in the ghost town, but spend a lot of time in the lab for hands-on stuff. I would be perfectly happy with a “desk hotelling” situation on a permanent basis. The plant is someplace I visit when I need to hook up probes.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#126

Post by slavapestov » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #122

alextheparrot wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really is the worst of both worlds for the employees. Employees are still bound to a physical location, but you also have to maintain a home office and heterogenous communications stack [0]. Also, coordinating who is in the office when is a nightmare and can often lead to oversubscribed days. The only utility I can see is if you need to run for appointments that are easier to do when working from home, but this…

I'm not sure it's quite worst of both worlds. One of my company's local offices would be a 90ish minute commute. That's doable for a day a week but not really sustainable a lot more frequently than that. (I used to have another job with a similar commute; it was rough on a regular basis even if I didn't go in many days.) You can definitely increase the radius of where you can live but you're right that you can't go l…

Living in an outer suburb of the city where your office is located is still a lot less compelling than being able to live where you want though.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#127

Post by analog31 » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #62

geoelectric wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, exactly. Back in the 90s-2000s, though, it was easier to deal with an office-based outsource hub that had its own line manager, etc, mostly because things were so damned slow to send back and forth that you wanted to chunk project coordination. Those were comparatively rarer in the US, since anywhere you could put one together had enough tech industry to make the costs there prohibitive. Nowadays, you could jus…

>> you could just hire from the flyover states, find all the good techies that didn't make the pilgrimage to one of the traditional hotspots How many are there, though, really? And what happens when you now have to compete with _every_other_company_ that also wants to hire them? They'll make more money, good for them. But the majority of companies will just have to settle for hiring C-level talent.

Granted, I've never worked outside the Midwest, and what I know of tech hiring is mostly from reading HN. My impression is that "we only hire A players" is considered to be kind of a running joke. Interview processes seem, from a safe distance, to be dystopian. In addition, there seems to be an article every week on "hiring is broken" and an entire ecosystem of startups trying to solve that problem.

Yet somehow firms do OK with the people they manage to hire.

So maybe firms could just be less fearful of hiring, attract equal talent, and get on with life.

I doubt that I'd be considered an A player. My employer already makes productive use of talent in the Midwest, but we are not predominantly a software company.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#128

Post by slavapestov » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #8

lucasmullens wrote: post #3

This article misinterpreted the survey. 91% of people don't want to work from home, 91% want it as an option, and that's only people who are currently working from home who used to not. 57% seems more accurate: "But once the crisis is over, most (57%) of those who were working before the outbreak and who intend to stay part of the workforce say they want to be able to continue working from home." Actual survey result…

To me the concern here is that if a company offers working remotely as an option, remote workers will always be second-class citizens. (The bad habit of Slack DMs instead of conversations in a public channel is already pretty entrenched.) People that work in the office will have casual conversations that exclude people working remotely, and the remote workers will always be a little behind. I think for that reason th…

> I think for that reason that all or nothing is the most fair.

It seems like the fairest is to offer both and let the employees decide if the tradeoffs are worth it, then?

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#129

Post by slavapestov » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 8:56 PM UTC

rockinghigh wrote: post #75

kodah wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some people who cannot work from home. These people have been especially vocal. Sometimes they include people who have kids, other times they include people who get their social interaction in at work. I think the office should accommodate them as well as remote workers. The biggest challenge I've faced being on a remote team (read: not necessarily WFH) is that people who are at the primary physical locatio…

The main reason people who have kids cannot easily work from home is because schools are closed and they have to take care of their kids during the day.

Yeah. In a hypothetical situation where schools were closed but workplaces were open, parents would not be able to go to the office to work either.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#130

Post by dang » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

anewaccount2021 wrote: post #36

duxup wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I feel like there's a VERY important needle to thread here about what people mean by saying they "want to work from home". And that sentiment might also change post-COVID. I also wonder what this means for people who aren't in the best situation to work remotely.

> what people mean by saying they "want to work from home". Its not complicated, "I", "want", "to", "work", "from", "home".

"Don't be snarky."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html