Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#161

Post by VectorLock » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

tinyhouse wrote: post #57

amateurdev wrote: post #2

I have a feeling a lot of companies will follow suit. It saves up huge costs in real-estate by not having to provide seats to people. It also might just open up more companies to hire from any time zone.

Real-estate cost is not an issue for most companies. Also, all fully remote companies that I know have company "retreats" twice a year for all employees, which is expensive. It's not mandatory of course but very important. The bigger issue for me is what will happen to the US tech market. Why would Twitter hire people in the US if they can hire much cheaper people from Europa and other locations. The US government re…

Real-estate and cost of living drives compensation which is a main issue for most companies.

Biannual "retreats" for companies that are fully remote sounds like a good idea, and I wonder if there is somewhere between "biannual retreats" and "butts in seats 5 days a week" that companies will meander towards.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#162

Post by mjayhn » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

ccktlmazeltov wrote: post #99

robbyking wrote: post #18

I work for a pretty well-known tech company, and my hypothesis is that we'll switch to a mostly at-home work week, where most people WFH 3 or 4 days a week with one day of the week being designated as a "meeting day" where everyone is in the office. I don't think this will happen because of people are worried about virus transmission, but instead because most people like working from home and we've proven we can be j…

I work for another pretty well-known company and management just asked us how we were feeling about a future were we could chose to have a designated desk in the office or not. This is crazy, our wildest dreams are being answered.

I quit a great job to work remotely 4 months ago after about 15 years of trying to do it. I feel like the universe is having an absolute riot at my expense right now. This is not a fun time to be new at a company. It's so hard to focus and sip the koolaid when the world feels like it's falling apart outside of my skype meetings and facing customers and selling products is the last thing I'm energized to do.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#163

Post by TylerE » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

_nhynes wrote: post #150

mjayhn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't go near an open office after COVID19 and I doubt I'm alone, I think things will change greatly.

I'm not sure that I understand this sentiment. Is the worry about COVID specifically (and hence would be abated by a vaccine or herd immunity), or is it about increased awareness of all infectious diseases? My lack of understanding stems from a (perhaps naive) assumption that social distancing will eventually go away along with the threat. I'd be glad to hear others' opinions on the matter.

It is unlikely the vaccine will be perfect. Strains mutate. Plenty of people still get the flu despite a flu vaccine.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#164

Post by ghaff » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

dddbbb wrote: post #137

I work at a large tech company on a young team (average age is late twenties). In my experience many don't view working from home regularly as a benefit. I understand that must change drastically when you're middle aged, have a family to live around and a spacious house in the suburbs. But most younger people want to live in the middle of the city (i.e. small, often shared apartments but a short commute) and have no…

Before the current situation, I've had this discussion with various people in the context of space getting tight in some offices. Basically, I was told that a lot of the younger people (mostly not developers in this case) would be looking for another job if they could no longer come into an office. I do know I would probably have hated being forced to work out of my apartment right out of school.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#165

Post by subsubzero » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #11

bfrog wrote: post #4

And so begins the bay area salary bubble pop

Don't forget about the commercial real estate bubble pop, and potentially a massive pump in prices of family homes as a result. I think that investors are going to be moving their money out of commercial real estate, and into residential. Edit: to be clear: I don't live in the Bay Area, and I think the housing prices there could go either way: 1) People spend more time in their homes and spend an even larger portion…

I think a bit of both #1 and #2, I think you will see a large exodus of people from SF as it is very densely populated and you have people with many roommates who make very good money compared to the rest of the US. I see that crowd leaving for cheaper pastures in droves(#2). There are alot of companies that have positions that are tied to location, hardware engineers, execs, etc, these people will stay and that will point to #1. So I think the prices in SF will drop, and prices in the south bay will at worst stay flat and possibly go up as it is mostly single family homes and the companies in the area are doing very well, (google, apple, netflix, zoom)

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#166

Post by nsnick » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

dddbbb wrote: post #137

I work at a large tech company on a young team (average age is late twenties). In my experience many don't view working from home regularly as a benefit. I understand that must change drastically when you're middle aged, have a family to live around and a spacious house in the suburbs. But most younger people want to live in the middle of the city (i.e. small, often shared apartments but a short commute) and have no…

Except that a lot of tech companies are out in the suburbs...

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#167

Post by deeblering4 » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

dddbbb wrote: post #137

I work at a large tech company on a young team (average age is late twenties). In my experience many don't view working from home regularly as a benefit. I understand that must change drastically when you're middle aged, have a family to live around and a spacious house in the suburbs. But most younger people want to live in the middle of the city (i.e. small, often shared apartments but a short commute) and have no…

Why would people fitting this description not prefer the flexibility of working remotely?

As an aside -- I prefer not to use the term "work from home", as the ideal (for me) is the ability to work from anywhere at my option.

Also, for what it's worth, co-working spaces can be a workable alternative to a traditional office.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#168

Post by II-V-I » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

robbyking wrote: post #18

I work for a pretty well-known tech company, and my hypothesis is that we'll switch to a mostly at-home work week, where most people WFH 3 or 4 days a week with one day of the week being designated as a "meeting day" where everyone is in the office. I don't think this will happen because of people are worried about virus transmission, but instead because most people like working from home and we've proven we can be j…

> people WFH 3 or 4 days a week with one day of the week being designated as a "meeting day" where everyone is in the office.

I sort of had this setup before covid: the company I work for does consulting and my coworkers and I will often be at client's offices. When we write our contracts we make sure to always designate Friday as the day where all employees come back to the 'home base' for meetings, catch-ups, socializing, etc. It works quite well, and we'd always look forward to Friday's because of it.

If I could continue to WFH 3-4 days a week and then go into the office on Thursday/Friday, that would be great.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#169

Post by dumbfoundded » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #135

dumbfoundded wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collaboration tools are already pretty solid. What else do you really need other than a remote desktop + video conferencing? I think the biggest use case will be helping recreate the virtual water cooler.

>>I think the biggest use case will be helping recreate the virtual water cooler. I dont think that is hard to replicate. Group chat / slack / teams is a common feature and can easily be used to fill this void.

It's hard to force WFH people to create non-job related relationships. Like if your jobs don't overlap, you'll probably never talk in a WFH setting. In an office setting, forming relationships is both personal and functional. Maybe some of this communication isn't efficient but it probably has value.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#170

Post by TylerE » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

rubber_duck wrote: post #45

Ididntdothis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is still a lack of things like white boarding tools. I haven’t seen anything that could replace a big whiteboard. Also webcam images generally look horrible. I am sure something could be done about that. Better microphones and speakers in laptops would help. Better suppression of background noises like kids would help. I think there are a lot of little things that could improve tools a lot.

If you plan on working from home full time then invest in a decent camera/microphone. I already had focusrite audio interface for guitar, an XLR mic gives amazing sound, decent interface and will probably get a usb camera (is there an action cam like GoPro that can double as a webcam ?)

Doesn't even need to be that complex.

There are really good USB mics these days that are just plug and play. The Blue series for instance (Yeti, etc).