Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

today.yougov.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–186 of 186 posts

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#181

Post by irrational »

dukeyukey wrote: post #174
irrational wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to the pandemic my company was moving to a model where nobody had a fixed desk. You had a backpack and a laptop and plugged is wherever you could find a free place. You were not supposed to stay at the same desk for longer than 3 hours. There was actually a team in each building walking around and enforcing it. Post-pandemic they have said that is being scrapped since there is too much chance of infecting peopl…

So I get the idea of hotdesking, even if I think it's bad. But moving every 3 hours? Why tf do they think that's a good idea? Office workers aren't migratory animals that must move on when the good grasses have been depleted.

Because some desks are better than others (the ones on the fourth floor by the windows overlooking the lake come to mind). Also, they don't want people setting up shop and claiming one desk as their own. If I show up early and sit at the same desk all day long everyday, after awhile everyone will just see that as my desk.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#182

Post by sedachv »

psim1 wrote: post #178
sedachv wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> set a cost-of-living salary This is total nonsense, and you should never put up with this rationalization if HR tries to pull "cost of living" on you. Explain to them that it is called a "labor market" for a reason. Prices in markets are determined by supply and demand; pricing is not driven by cost except as a floor. This is economics 101.

The major tech companies are doing it. Nonsense maybe, but you're not going to win an argument with them. "At-will."

What argument? It is a salary negotiation. Do you not bother to negotiate your starting salary either?

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#183

Post by ramblerman »

kodah wrote: post #46
ska wrote: post #7

I suspect a lot of the "we're all going to be remote from now on" sentiment is overblown. It seems to me more likely that there will be a few more remote friendly companies, and a very few more remote-only companies after the dust settles, but the real shift will be for most "office based" workers will be the expectation of partially working from home. There is a big difference between "never going to an office again…

There are some people who cannot work from home. These people have been especially vocal. Sometimes they include people who have kids, other times they include people who get their social interaction in at work. I think the office should accommodate them as well as remote workers. The biggest challenge I've faced being on a remote team (read: not necessarily WFH) is that people who are at the primary physical locatio…

This sounds a bit like wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Sure it's not entirely fair, but it's human nature.

It's akin to saying you want good relationships and friendships but without the hassle of all that conversation.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#184

Post by throw14082020 »

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…

Executives want people back. Executives are often the ones that don't stay in the office, or have a far different office experience (power dynamics, extra physical resources). People don't want to be back. More jobs will be more flexible. The best people can find jobs they like. Over time, executives who don't adapt will be stuck a certain type of employee.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#185

Post by yourapostasy »

scarmig wrote: post #109
twh270 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on "[The executives have] seen enough they don't like about full WFH"? I'm trying to gather enough anecdotal and "research-y" data to make decisions around this for myself and friends/co-workers.

Despite all the individual cases of people claiming WFH makes them more productive, in the aggregate employees are not. In the particular data I've seen, new employees and more junior employees suffer significantly, even while more senior engineers hold steady or improve, perhaps because their responsibilities shift to more easily quantifiable metrics than knowledge sharing, mentoring, and onboarding.

In my more agile clients during the pandemic, I've seen a sharp shift to tracking time spent on those soft metrics, and acknowledging the space they take up on time per day. This led to explicit C-level support for more meeting discipline, and explicit No-Meeting-Day block-outs on calendars with the sole exception of production outages and specific meetings for specific projects with direct oversight from management 2 layers down from C-level. These clients' leadership have been very pleased with the overall productivity gain during the pandemic. The visibility into what people are working on and accomplishing, what planning captures, what planning does not capture (and importantly, who is responsible for most of the unplanned work so more planning assistance can be directed towards their areas of oversight) has pleasantly increased. A key tactic that has helped is explicitly setting aside entire planning weeks throughout the year, and making a conscious decision to trade off go-go-gains-all-the-time for more predictable delivery results so the business can plan around the deliveries.
Post reply on HN