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People love working remotely

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Re: People love working remotely

#151

Post by ownagefool »

nimblegorilla wrote: post #124
dustinmoris wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big boss said "a 15 minute fact-to-face is better than a multi-day email chain" I can't believe that people who are so out of touch with reality are still given so much responsibility at companies which they effectively unknowingly misuse to make everyone's life miserable. There's nothing wrong about a multi day email chain. Sometimes it's the best communication tool, because non-critical/important things can b…

> There's nothing wrong about a multi day email chain. Email chains can work for some things, but they mostly suck compared to face to face meetings. You never know if someone else is silent because they agree, they haven't read the whole email, or they haven't taken time to write a response. Most things able to be solved by email chains are better off in some sort of issue tracking or wiki system.

Face to face meetings also suck because the extroverts own the floor. You don't know if people didn't pipe up because they agree, or because they aren't rude enough to stop Bob talking, and now it's too late.

Re: People love working remotely

#152

Post by umvi »

chewbacha wrote: post #44
ken wrote: post #19

Elephant in the room: how many of these people would prefer it to having a private office ? Strangely, this article/survey/infographic never mentions that option. I'd prefer remote work, too, over sitting in an open floorplan office, but I'd much prefer an actual office to either one. The easy "why" is: despite all the drawbacks, a lot of us will do pretty much anything to get out of an open floorplan.

Many would for sure like a private office! But, there are big advantages of remote work over private offices: 1. Lower cost to the company. Private offices are expensive to build and maintain. 2. Less commute time to the employee. Private offices still require commuting which impacts the environment and the employees personal time. 3. Job flexibility. Home workers have (or will have) more options for employment. 4. N…

There are disadvantages too, though:

- Accountants/lawyers are also expensive to employ, and remote workers that live in N different states will require accountants/lawyers that are experts in tax/employment laws of said N states.

- Requires much higher quality of team communication and coordination (of requirements, workload, work scope, expectations, etc), which can be hard to achieve.

Re: People love working remotely

#153

Post by aNoob7000 »

nimblegorilla wrote: post #124
dustinmoris wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big boss said "a 15 minute fact-to-face is better than a multi-day email chain" I can't believe that people who are so out of touch with reality are still given so much responsibility at companies which they effectively unknowingly misuse to make everyone's life miserable. There's nothing wrong about a multi day email chain. Sometimes it's the best communication tool, because non-critical/important things can b…

> There's nothing wrong about a multi day email chain. Email chains can work for some things, but they mostly suck compared to face to face meetings. You never know if someone else is silent because they agree, they haven't read the whole email, or they haven't taken time to write a response. Most things able to be solved by email chains are better off in some sort of issue tracking or wiki system.

A face to face meeting is no silver bullet either. I've been to many meeting where someone with a strong opinion and with the manager's blessing takes over the conversation/agenda.

What I like about an email is that it allows you time to digest the information and then respond to someone.

Re: People love working remotely

#154

Post by okmokmz »

gexla wrote: post #67

This piece has the feeling of being written by "every Friday is Hawaiian T-shirt day" after his employer went all remote and he needed a new task. I have worked remotely more than not and it's not ideal. I suspect that if teleportation machines existed, then remote work wouldn't be a thing. Once you leave the office for the day (or leave the house to go to the office) then the logistical problems start (where do I fi…

Wow, there are a ton of assumptions in this argument, and you seem to be projecting a lot of your personal beliefs and feeling as well. I don't have children, but my girlfriend and pets have never bothered me or been a distraction nearly to the extent of distractions that occur in an office. I definitely don't have a big house and lots of money to build an "operations center." I have a little room that I use as my office, homelab, and to home a few other hobbies. I would absolutely hate working in a co-working space, and my productivity would certainly go down. Of your examples of "lost communication," none of those are things I feel I would be missing out on and I've never had issues communicating with my coworkers remotely.

Re: People love working remotely

#155

Post by g051051 »

LanceH wrote: post #63
g051051 wrote: post #16

I was full-time WFH for 6 wonderful years. I was happy, my productivity was off the charts, I was saving tons of money because I didn't have to spend it on my car and clothes, I had extra time that I wasn't wasting on my commute, etc. Then, we had a big shake-up. A bunch of senior people left, and new "leadership" came in to "transform" our workplace. All WFH was cancelled in our division (in spite of still being off…

25 years of this and not once has someone responsible for implementing the open plan included themselves in that plan. Sales and marketing somehow require offices as well. I've heard of the mythical "president in a cubicle" but never seen it. I would really have more respect if they just came out and said, "we're going cheap."

Our structure is low-level employees, like me -> squad lead -> tribe lead -> VP -> SVP -> CTO. VP and above have offices. SVP was the one who cancelled WFH. The open plan office thing predates the SVP and CTO, who are the main part of the new "leadership" that came in over the last year.

Re: People love working remotely

#156

Post by neeleshs »

At our company (I'm a cofounder), we encourage remote. Some people need f2f once in a while so there is a co-working space we have for that. I split my time 50-50 at office and home. Saved 1.5 hours a day in commute compared to my previous job. It is hard to scale well, unless we built a strong culture of communication and spell out a few things.

Re: People love working remotely

#157

Post by Reedx »

ken wrote: post #19

Elephant in the room: how many of these people would prefer it to having a private office ? Strangely, this article/survey/infographic never mentions that option. I'd prefer remote work, too, over sitting in an open floorplan office, but I'd much prefer an actual office to either one. The easy "why" is: despite all the drawbacks, a lot of us will do pretty much anything to get out of an open floorplan.

There's a middle ground I like, which is office rooms that have 2 - 4 people.

I've worked in private offices, home office, open floor plans and small shared rooms. The worst are large open floor plans. My favorite have been offices with rooms for 2 - 4 people. That's the sweet spot, I think.

My favorite of all is mixing that with WFH. e.g., Office M/W/F and WFH Tues/Thurs.

Re: People love working remotely

#158

Post by ebiester »

kps wrote: post #141
g051051 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They cite this particular bit of idiocy from the Agile Manifesto: > The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation. They fail to realize that when it was written in 2001, communication technologies were far inferior to what we have now. So that face to face should be updated to something like "immediate" or "real time".

What they also failed to realize, which was also true then, is that the person I need a face-to-face conversation with is neither in the desk next to me nor at my employer's site the next country over: he was in my desk last year, works somewhere else now, and didn't write anything down because Agile™ told him it wasn't ‘effective’.

This is a poor understanding of "comprehensive documentation."

You should absolutely be keeping documentation. However, you should not require hundreds of pages of specs and design documents before a single line of code is written.

Instead, documentation should be written at the same time as the code, and should follow what is actually needed for and by developers and the organization rather than being subject to a "gate".

It's about writing the right documentation. Some of that documentation is harder to write: For example, writing a specification that can literally run against the software, like in behavior driven development. (This is one of many potential tools. It may not be applicable for you.) It may look like a wiki. It may look like a set of UML diagrams and a formal spec. It depends on the team and the domain of the problem.

The problem that the manifesto was talking about was one of documentation as a deliverable that was not properly updated and only written to pass a requirement of the process.

Re: People love working remotely

#159

Post by okmokmz »

Nursie wrote: post #14

I work remotely 2 days a week. I'd quite like to go to 3 and might soon. But without being in the office a couple of days a week for collaboration, a lot of stuff just wouldn't work. Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours. I'd definitely recommend partial remote working. Not sure I'd want it fully.

>Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours.

I haven't found this to be the case

Re: People love working remotely

#160

Post by lobotryas »

aNoob7000 wrote: post #153
nimblegorilla wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing wrong about a multi day email chain. Email chains can work for some things, but they mostly suck compared to face to face meetings. You never know if someone else is silent because they agree, they haven't read the whole email, or they haven't taken time to write a response. Most things able to be solved by email chains are better off in some sort of issue tracking or wiki system.

A face to face meeting is no silver bullet either. I've been to many meeting where someone with a strong opinion and with the manager's blessing takes over the conversation/agenda. What I like about an email is that it allows you time to digest the information and then respond to someone.

It’s almost like both approaches have their pros, cons, and appropriate times when they should be used.

I like a combined arms approach. Start an email thread and if there is no timely reply, or consensus is getting hard to reach, walk over to the other person’s desk for a chat or call a meeting.

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