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A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

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Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#151

Post by ghaff »

slavapestov wrote: post #126
ghaff wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure I'd live somewhere different to be honest. I'm far enough out of the city that I'm essentially in a rural area. I like being close enough to a major city that I can go in for theater and things like that in normal times (and access to a major airport).

Certainly I could live wherever in the country I wanted to--though western US starts to become more difficult because of timezone differences to Europe--but no interest in moving at this point.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#152

Post by andrekandre »

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…

> Basically, they want to operate the building at pre-pandemic capacity of 50% or so, rotating who is in and who isn't.

i dont know if rotation or full wfh forever is a good idea, but i must say that pandemic or not, offices (at least the open kind) at anything above 50% capacity are horrible places to work... the noise, distractions and reduced oxygen levels are brain-killing...

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#153

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

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.

> But why does it have to be an either or?

In mixed onsite / remote teams, the remote employees can be seriously disadvantaged regarding access to information, participation in decision-making, etc.

Some of the comments above mention this effect, and my own personal experience has very painfully confirmed it. It was a truly awful experience for me. I suspect it's what lead to the maxim, "If anyone is remote, then everyone must be remote."

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#154

Post by ghaff »

macksd wrote: post #61
bendauphinee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is because I had been able to build up a lot of the working relationships I have now in person I’ve been remote only for a decade, and built those same relationships while doing so.

Yeah it's definitely doable. I suppose in addition to the relationships, I especially appreciate having been in the office because it was very early in my career. There's a lot of stuff I know now that I didn't know then about how typical software companies work (where my previous jobs had been very different). I suspect I would've had a much harder time picking up a lot of unspoken understanding if I had been remote…

I've been fully remote for a few years and more remote than not for quite a bit longer. But it's difficult for me to imagine having done this as a fresh grad. Very different time and communication channels to be sure, but still.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#155

Post by mrwoggle »

I started a new job before covid hit. Some other devs started to annoy me. Just those silly things many people have. Like sighing every other second and never ending chit chat. I mean, I can tolerate it. But WFH is so much better. I can wear pyjamas, scratch my sack, do short power naps.

I'm in hardware, so I still have to make trips to the office. Those are way more fun. And those trips turn into social events. It's like catching up with friends.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#156

Post by dont__panic »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #149
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…

Right, my company plans to let us work from home a maximum of 3 days a week in the future, but they're cutting our office space by at least 30%. So we wouldn't have a designated desk anymore, just a bunch of similar desks on a first-come-first-serve basis every day. My main issue with this is that you can't set up your desk how you like it anymore. You can't set the desk height, you get a chair that's differently bro…

And in my experience, you also have to get used to different "neighbors" with different annoying habits every time you come into the office.

May god have mercy on you if your company lets sales and product who are constantly chatting on calls (often at high volume) into your desk area when you're trying to focus on programming or design...

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#157

Post by dont__panic »

michaelt wrote: post #116
macNchz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With that comes some unique space challenges, including but not limited to how does having a desk work if only 50% of people are in the office on a given day. I've heard of companies hot-desking like this so they can have fewer desks than total employees, splitting each desk between people whose schedules are "out of phase" with each other. It sounds basically intolerable. I'm somewhat less sensitive to many common…

It'd certainly be alienating not to have a desk if you were in the office every day. But if you're doing two days a week in the office, all your meetings will move into those days so they can happen in person, so you'll miss having your own desk less.

Sounds frustrating to coordinate meetings between different teams.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#158

Post by dont__panic »

missedthecue wrote: post #132
DebtDeflation wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's optimal for a 9 year old schoolchild isn't necessarily optimal for a 30 year old professional.

College from home has been a spectacular failure as well

Because college in the United States, at least, is more about networking and moving out of your parents' home than actually attending classes.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#159

Post by dont__panic »

Bakary wrote: post #143
bzbarsky wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of assumptions going into that implication. My experience with working remotely, on globally distributed teams, for about 20 years now is: * Synchronous high-bandwidth communication (read: meeting, ideally with a shared whiteboard) is pretty handy sometimes. * Timezones really do matter. If you want a sync meeting that includes people in Europe, the US, and APAC, someone will have a bad time. If you w…

Most of these hurdles seem really unimportant compared to the salary savings

Kind of like making products out of crappier constituent parts seems really unimportant compared to the cost savings.

Does it make sense on the short term balance sheet? Of course. But, to quote Christmas vacation:

"Sometimes things look good on paper, but lose their luster when you see how it affects real folks. I guess a healthy bottom line doesn't mean much if to get it, you have to hurt the ones you depend on. It's people that make the difference. Little people like you."

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#160

Post by dont__panic »

D13Fd wrote: post #117

From the small business side, office space in a prime location is super expensive and it would be nice to cut back on that.

Cutting the barriers to entry to starting up a tech business definitely seems like an advantage. Just requiring the cash for a corporate lease probably pushes a lot of startups to VC capitol.
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