181–190 of 369 posts
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.
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You're really comparing prisons that only allow virtual communication to working remotely? Lets brainstorm a list of ways that you can see people while working from home that you couldn't from prison. 1. If you have any family members that will be home throughout the day you can see them 2. You can step outside and talk to your neighbors 3. You can take a 10 minute break to walk to a local store/park 4. You can go ou…
Many people need more than just their immediate family. Neighbors are a terrible source of social interaction. Where I am, our neighbors refuse to interact with us except to complain about something like noise or street parking. Been to a park during the day? It's nanny's and mom's. How many are going to be like, "yeah, random dude approaching me and trying to chat me up. Great!" Most are sketched out unless you got…
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…
Why did we end up coming back on-site? My manager (who works in Finance!?) couldn't explain to the higher-ups what we have been up to (very non-technical person) and they decided we were too disconnected from the rest of the company. Never even had a chance to plead our case or discuss alternative options... not sure how much longer I will be here.
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> 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…
I get 100+ emails per day. I'm almost certainly not reading the multi day email chain unless someone IMs me to ask for my input on it.
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>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
I do, continually, particularly when communicating with the less technically inclined. Slack conversations can drag on, email chains take days, conference calls are great when everyone's paying attention but that's not often (IMHO). Tem minutes in a room discussing an issue with all interested parties can sort things out far faster, in my experience. Which may not be universally applicable - I'm not claiming it is, o…
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…
Happened to me. What I did was go into the office and constantly talk to the vp's and ceo. Not about anything important really boring weather/how are you doing? The more removed the person from my department the more I would go out of my way to talk to them. Start asking difficult questions at the all staff forums. Always threw in doubts in meetings with non-tech people. I asked for a special chair for my back. Start…
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/...
Re: a special chair for your back... "Order high-quality materials which are hard to get. If you don't get them argue about it. Warn that inferior materials will mean inferior work."
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> 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.
In my experience, nothing except "bugs" and "customer support issues" are better in an issue tracking system. Issue trackers add too much overhead for end users, and the "structured data" features encourage people to adopt processes that require every user to think about what level of the hierarchy some issue belongs at, what tags to assign, who "owns" the issue, etc. For most communication, there ends up being a serious impedance mismatch between the structure of the data in the issue tracker and the natural flow of communication.
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.
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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…
> 1. Lower cost to the company. Private offices are expensive to build and maintain. You're just pushing that cost to the employee. Are you paying them the amount saved, to furnish their own private offices? Or are you just penalizing the worker to save a buck? > 3. Job flexibility. Home workers have (or will have) more options for employment. I have not seen this. Most companies still don't offer remote work. > 4. N…
No, like an actual community. Like people who live near each other and don't necessarily share a corporate brand but take care of each other and share memories and build traditions. People naturally have communities based on place, so getting hired and forced to move for that job disrupts communities. It's better for the everyone's social and psychological well-being to stay put.