171–180 of 287 posts
Any Japanese care to chime in on how WFH is accepted culturally? When I worked for a Japanese tech company I was surprised by how old school they were. Landlines, business cards, reams of paper, week long meetings about policies, and this was a software company. WFH was forbidden unless it was an emergency.
Add fax machines and it will be perfect picture of current situation in Germany.
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This is what benmw333 is referring to. The Panasonic Let's. Despite how bulky it looks, it weighs about the same as the macbook air. It's basically used by anyone who isn't a manager, designer or software developer. You see them everywhere . https://biz.panasonic.com/jp-ja/products-services/letsnote/l...
I think this design is actually pretty cool. Wonder if it has Linux support.
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I mean FWIW I’m American and your explanation sounds very foreign to me. I’m a millennial though, so owning a house at all is quite obstacle. Scrounging up a down payment when even a 2 bedroom apartment is $1-$1.5 million is not the easiest task. Renting an extra 2 bedrooms to have lying around in case we suddenly need 2 offices would also cost an extra couple thousand dollars a month. My wife and I are both working…
You can take 600k 30 minutes out of seattle and love your 2800sqft modern home (approx/just now starting to look for myself) Update: (Not modern but im a fan anyway. https://www.redfin.com/WA/Bothell/15601-Cascadian-Way-98012/...
Edit: also a home like that would probably have been like 450k just 4yrs ago. Prices have skyrocketed around here
Not commenting on this specific case here, but I believe we currently see the pendulum swinging from one extreme (WFH only at a very exclusive subset of companies) to the other extreme ("WFH first" policies) I'm convinced the true winners will be those companies that find a smart mix of both worlds. This includes recognizing that both concepts have their strengths (e.g., people are a lot more disciplined about meetin…
There is no middle ground -- WFH is self-reinforcing trend, because offices are much less useful when they are half-empty and all processes have go online. As soon as some coworkers move, others follow. If people start working 2-3 days at home ... they start to think about moving somewhere better. I wonder what is the endgame of this rearrangement? Perhaps nomadism will become common? But in that case, cities will lo…
As far as human pyschology goes, I think it's hard to be productive over the very long term with almost no real in-person time to connect with your team. We're social animals and we bond best when together. And we are more productive and efficient when we have bonded in that way.
Even famously all-remote companies shell out cash to fly everyone together at least a few times a year because of this. At some point, though, there are diminishing returns to getting everyone in the same room. The optimum point surely varies from person to person and depends on the nature of their work, but I don't think the peak is "every day" or "never".
Yes, offices are less useful when they're empty half the time. But homes are too! Most American homes sit empty from 8am-6pm every single day. Miles and miles of dead suburban streets, empty driveways, houses silent except for the ticking of thermostats.
I'm interested to see a company try a middle ground like this: Everyone works from home most days. At some periodic interval, maybe once a week, everyone comes to some shared space for meeting and coordination work.
This sounds like the worst of both worlds because you need both home office space and office space. But the office space can likely be shared with several teams. An office big enough for 100 people could service a 1,000 if teams only came in once every two weeks. If in-person days are mostly around meetings and communication, you don't need a lot of dedicated desk space. It doesn't need to feel like a permanent "territory" for each worker. Instead, just a pile of shared meeting rooms and open spaces.
If you still have to come in a few times, then it sounds like you're still stuck living close to an urban center. But, actually, the livable radius increases dramatically. A one-hour each way commute is a nightmare if you do it every day. That's ten hours a week stuck in a car. But if you only come in once every two weeks, then you could cut your total commute time in half while living five times as far away. And, since in-person days are mostly for meeting anyway, it's viable to have an understanding that commuting is part of your "work day" and have a shorter in-person work day.
In return, you get to spend less time commuting and more time in your own community, with your pets, with your loved ones, and in your own home.
I am quite bearish about the impact of WFH, especially for software engineers, but if there is one country where I think the coronavirus can have a huge positive effect for the economy, it is Japan. Japanese companies are generally extremely inefficient. Outside of a few powerhouses, partially thanks to a protected and large domestic market, Japanese labor practices are antiquated. There is a culture of overwork that…
Not commenting on this specific case here, but I believe we currently see the pendulum swinging from one extreme (WFH only at a very exclusive subset of companies) to the other extreme ("WFH first" policies) I'm convinced the true winners will be those companies that find a smart mix of both worlds. This includes recognizing that both concepts have their strengths (e.g., people are a lot more disciplined about meetin…
There is no middle ground -- WFH is self-reinforcing trend, because offices are much less useful when they are half-empty and all processes have go online. As soon as some coworkers move, others follow. If people start working 2-3 days at home ... they start to think about moving somewhere better. I wonder what is the endgame of this rearrangement? Perhaps nomadism will become common? But in that case, cities will lo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Add fax machines and it will be perfect picture of current situation in Germany.
How are two of the most advanced manufacturing countries so backwards?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no middle ground -- WFH is self-reinforcing trend, because offices are much less useful when they are half-empty and all processes have go online. As soon as some coworkers move, others follow. If people start working 2-3 days at home ... they start to think about moving somewhere better. I wonder what is the endgame of this rearrangement? Perhaps nomadism will become common? But in that case, cities will lo…
I don't think it's anywhere near as bimodal as you say. As far as human pyschology goes, I think it's hard to be productive over the very long term with almost no real in-person time to connect with your team. We're social animals and we bond best when together. And we are more productive and efficient when we have bonded in that way. Even famously all-remote companies shell out cash to fly everyone together at least…
I work on a very distributed team and, in normal times, we just physically get together in one of our offices or in conjunction with some event a lot of people are attending anyway a few times a year. Most of us (normally) travel a good part of the time anyway so it's really not especially disruptive.
I actually agree that remote teams should have some real F2F time but that needn't mean living within commuting distance of a common office.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What struck me was the seemingly 1995 era laptops people were working on in the trains.
This is what benmw333 is referring to. The Panasonic Let's. Despite how bulky it looks, it weighs about the same as the macbook air. It's basically used by anyone who isn't a manager, designer or software developer. You see them everywhere . https://biz.panasonic.com/jp-ja/products-services/letsnote/l...