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Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

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Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#151

Post by DougN7 »

makingstuffs wrote: post #119

Autonomous working has proven to be a game changer for myself and others in my team. I can login and out when I need to (meetings/stand ups I obviously need to factor in) which allows me to take an actual break and go somewhere with my dog when I am feeling bogged down/unproductive. The ability to do this means that, when I return to the desk, I am refreshed and ready to tackle a problem with fresh eyes instead of gl…

I’m not sure I agree. Our industry isn’t full of people that have more integrity than the general population, and “your problem for hiring the wrong people” is short sighted, or even victim blaming. I’ll share this recent HN post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35767280

Remote work only makes sense when everyone has integrity, but that seems less and less likely in my experience, sadly.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#152

Post by theonlybutlet »

dilap wrote: post #18
observer987 wrote: post #2

Remote work threatens the foundation of the commercial real estate market. Expect a huge push to get people back into the office - especially if there is softness in the job market.

Are the incentives really there? Obviously the people with the real estate would like this, but if they were really that influential, you'd also see a huge push for private offices (=> more space per employee, more real-estate demand), which alas we don't. I think if you see companies shying away from remote work it'll really just be because it isn't proving effective -- because companies will be losing out on huge r…

The biggest thing would be for those that own their premises, who would have to take impairments (write downs) on the values of their assets. Their lease liabilities also start to look exorbitant and many will be forced to act on this, cutting these leases and recognize the lease cancellation cost all at once (usually office leases require all payments for the contract term to cancel), taking a large financial knock upfront. Basically large knocks on their profit in the very short term.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#153

Post by helij »

fooker wrote: post #56

I have noticed that senior employees, rather selfishly, advocate for full remote work. This robs junior people of valuable one on one mentorship and makes it extremely difficult to gain domain expertise and break into niche fields.

When I was an associate/junior I longed for remote work but seniors tried to keep me in the office as much as they could. Now that I am a senior I advocate for remote work to enable associates/juniors that want to work from home to do so. We have offices and whoever wants to do so can work from the office. Many associates/juniors use that opportunity but still the general consensus is that flexibility is the key here - they maybe come to the office once or twice a week.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#154

Post by theonlybutlet »

Gigachad wrote: post #117
pdonis wrote: post #12

When you actually look at the claim Altman can defend from his own experience, it's not that remote work doesn't work for "the tech industry"; it's that remote work doesn't work for early stage startups . But most of "the tech industry" is not early stage startups. Most of the people working in the tech industry could still be working remotely, while at the same time the small fraction of them that are working at ear…

Yeah, if you are just pumping out generic jira ticket work which doesn't require interaction with anyone else, of course remote works well. If you are actually trying to move fast, throw ideas around, and collaborate, nothing beats being in the same room. Video calls are a poor replacement to real life interactions. Otherwise the air travel industry would have been crippled by now.

Video calls are a perfect replacement, those that can't do it generally either have: a poor video call culture (people avoiding calls etc., Not turning on video, calls been seen as way too formal and rigid) or just can't use technology effectively.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#155

Post by noobermin »

DougN7 wrote: post #151
makingstuffs wrote: post #119

Autonomous working has proven to be a game changer for myself and others in my team. I can login and out when I need to (meetings/stand ups I obviously need to factor in) which allows me to take an actual break and go somewhere with my dog when I am feeling bogged down/unproductive. The ability to do this means that, when I return to the desk, I am refreshed and ready to tackle a problem with fresh eyes instead of gl…

I’m not sure I agree. Our industry isn’t full of people that have more integrity than the general population, and “your problem for hiring the wrong people” is short sighted, or even victim blaming. I’ll share this recent HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35767280 Remote work only makes sense when everyone has integrity, but that seems less and less likely in my experience, sadly.

"victim blaming" your boss, the person hired to have responsibility. You can't make this up.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#156

Post by theonlybutlet »

mullingitover wrote: post #54

I can definitely understand how there's more collaborative bandwidth when you have a small group in a room, focused on a large, complex project such as early stages at a startup. However, I don't think that's necessary once you've broken up the tasks and started executing. Once you're at that stage, being crammed together in an office where everyone's trying to do head-down work on their own is a productivity killer.…

More collaborative bandwidth, basically video calls aren't being used effectively, people are too rigid in how they use it and too reserved in what they say. People see calls as this formal thing, like it's still a novelty or something. Leave the call running when you go for a break, open up a whiteboard on a separate screen. There's plenty of ways to overcome this, people just aren't using the tools effectively, we need some video call training.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#157

Post by surgical_fire »

jochem9 wrote: post #142
makingstuffs wrote: post #119

Autonomous working has proven to be a game changer for myself and others in my team. I can login and out when I need to (meetings/stand ups I obviously need to factor in) which allows me to take an actual break and go somewhere with my dog when I am feeling bogged down/unproductive. The ability to do this means that, when I return to the desk, I am refreshed and ready to tackle a problem with fresh eyes instead of gl…

The point of the article is that for team work with unclearity you are more creative by working in a physical space together. If your work can be done in isolation and doesn't require a team to deal with any uncertainty, then by all means work fully remote. However, if your work is about innovation and collaboration, then it's going to be more effective to spend time together. I think it's telling that you talk about…

> The point of the article is that for team work with unclearity you are more creative by working in a physical space together.

The article also has no data supporting it. Only feelings. It's very typical for these sort of articles.

I am a lot more productive, and even creative working from home, where I have full control of the environment I'm in and not wasting effort on social interactions. Collaboration happens effectively in a remote settings as long as the company embraces it properly.

Since we are discussing feelings about remote work, this is as valid as anything else.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#158

Post by gedy »

jochem9 wrote: post #142
makingstuffs wrote: post #119

Autonomous working has proven to be a game changer for myself and others in my team. I can login and out when I need to (meetings/stand ups I obviously need to factor in) which allows me to take an actual break and go somewhere with my dog when I am feeling bogged down/unproductive. The ability to do this means that, when I return to the desk, I am refreshed and ready to tackle a problem with fresh eyes instead of gl…

The point of the article is that for team work with unclearity you are more creative by working in a physical space together. If your work can be done in isolation and doesn't require a team to deal with any uncertainty, then by all means work fully remote. However, if your work is about innovation and collaboration, then it's going to be more effective to spend time together. I think it's telling that you talk about…

> However, if your work is about innovation and collaboration,

Please, I've worked on plenty of successful new projects with a distributed team. This in-person bias is largely for people who don't know how to communicate effectively.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#159

Post by surgical_fire »

DougN7 wrote: post #151
makingstuffs wrote: post #119

Autonomous working has proven to be a game changer for myself and others in my team. I can login and out when I need to (meetings/stand ups I obviously need to factor in) which allows me to take an actual break and go somewhere with my dog when I am feeling bogged down/unproductive. The ability to do this means that, when I return to the desk, I am refreshed and ready to tackle a problem with fresh eyes instead of gl…

I’m not sure I agree. Our industry isn’t full of people that have more integrity than the general population, and “your problem for hiring the wrong people” is short sighted, or even victim blaming. I’ll share this recent HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35767280 Remote work only makes sense when everyone has integrity, but that seems less and less likely in my experience, sadly.

I see nothing particularly bad about the post you shared (it's just a personal account of someone that doesn't really care about their job), and the only thing that it tied to remote work is the mention of "multiple full time jobs".

But then I have to ask - if his employers are happy enough with his work to keep him around, what is the problem there?

Keep in mind, I am also the sort of guy that doesn't rage against employers doing layoffs when they have record profits. It's a natural cycle of business.

Once you take personal feelings off the table and see it all as business relationships, everything is alright. As long as nothing illegal is being done, of course.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#160

Post by vaidhy »

RestlessMind wrote: post #78
wg0 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So two friends living in two different places can never build a product and then business around it together. They must be sitting within one meter proximity or the magic potion doesn't work.

Why don't you show us successful startups where people built it fully remotely without meeting each other in person? Sam is claiming that in early stage startups , one need some in-person interaction which I fully agree with.

I do not know much about startups.. but there are many, many successful projects that have been fully remote - Linux, GNU, Debian, etc. Almost all open source projects I know of do not need an office space.
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