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I hope work from home continues

ryanmercer.com

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Re: I hope work from home continues

#191

Post by duckfang »

dleslie wrote: post #66
benrbray wrote: post #33

Those of you who think that remote-work-by-default would be a good thing, can I ask how your companies are handling career progression and collaboration, as well as mentorship of junior developers? Listen to Adam Savage [1] talk about his early career as a prop-maker. I just don't see how that sort of deep collaboration is possible remotely. As a recent graduate whose first full-time job has been full remote due to t…

Sure. The company I work at has always been remote-only, and I've been at it for over 5 years. We pair new hires, regardless of ability, with a mentor. They have access to a full checklist of on-boarding tasks and an actively maintained Basecamp. Perhaps the key point is that we do not have "hidden" discussions. Even the voice discussions have notes taken and recorded, and planning sessions are done via a recorded Mi…

> We're a flat hierarchy, and we encourage team members to be vocal about what they want to work on. The entire team plans quarterly targets and goals.

To be quite sincere, I've heard this before. And it ALWAYS ends like Animal Farm. Some are "more equal" than others, especially if your company has the usual upper management.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#192

Post by mrweasel »

sologoub wrote: post #164
mrweasel wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you clearify “don’t care”? Because here you simply report the company anonymously. You even have a person among the staff, who is extremely difficult to fire, that can do the reporting for you. Companies will be fined for this kind of environment and the office will be closed if things aren’t improved. You can’t choose to not care.

It depends on the country/connectedness of the execs with the said authority. In a non-corrupt place, sure report away. In a slightly corrupt, what if the regulator plays golf with an exec at your company? Or went to the same grade school? Etc. Fully corrupt is the easiest to explain.

True, I just don’t get the impression that the author live in central american or sub-saharan africa. He might though, so yeah that’s a valid point.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#193

Post by JackFr »

protonimitate wrote: post #143
blunte wrote: post #64

Wow, the author has a pretty miserable company :(. That said, I share most of the opinions even though I quite like the office environment of my company. I abso-fking-love choosing where I work (and to some degree, when). Being able to take my laptop and go sit under a canopy in my back yard when the weather is nice, seeing my rabbits hopping around the yard, my cats avoiding the aggressive she-rabbit, hearing the bi…

I have a hard time wrapping my head around why companies are mandating 100% return to office. Cost issues aside, I've always maintained that the absolute best experience is a hybrid/flexible schedule and location policy. I'm currently full time remote (I'm on the East Coast working for a West Coast company). My previous company had its main office in my current city, but allowed a super flexible choose-where-you-work…

> I have a hard time wrapping my head around why companies are mandating 100% return to office

Informal communication, informal collaboration, a culture of apprenticeship. To the extent that the organization values these they are all served much better in person than remote.

All companies and all people are different. There isn't a one size fits all. But it's not like there are no benefits to in person.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#194

Post by ramphastidae »

blunte wrote: post #170
folkrav wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And for the social aspect, weekend or week-long dev retreats are ideal. As much as I appreciate (most of) my coworkers, on nights and weekends I want to close my computer and spend quality time with my family, not see and talk to the same people I am already forced to talk to 35-40h a week. They might be ideal to you, but you're assuming quite a lot about everyone's situations if you think they work for everyone.

In my remote experience, I definitely don't talk to my colleagues that much. But when you're trying to build a small company, one approach is to make it feel like a family. And families always have people we like and people we like not so much. But there's something special about one unit working toward a single goal. My design is for a startup with young people. This would not work nearly as well for older people an…

So, to be clear, your plan is no different than all the other crappy companies people complain about: replace real process and professional management with calling yourself a family, “perks” the employees already pay for through reduced salary like food, and taking advantage of young, cheap labor that doesn’t know any better than to be exploited?

Re: I hope work from home continues

#195

Post by coryrc »

yardie wrote: post #88
benrbray wrote: post #33

Those of you who think that remote-work-by-default would be a good thing, can I ask how your companies are handling career progression and collaboration, as well as mentorship of junior developers? Listen to Adam Savage [1] talk about his early career as a prop-maker. I just don't see how that sort of deep collaboration is possible remotely. As a recent graduate whose first full-time job has been full remote due to t…

It's killing me slowly right now. I got hired in the middle of the pandemic and I think just 6 people even know I exist. I've spent more time talking with HR than my team members. Not for what you think, I respond to their emails and chats so we get along great. My team is mostly on DnD, no idea what their working on and emails take 24-48 hours to respond.

Start making 1-1 meetings just to get to know people better and the kind of things they do. Make sure you mostly work on projects where you can collaborate closely with 1-3 other people.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#197

Post by lsllc »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #12

What kind of office was this person working in? Having to breathe jet exhaust fumes while suffering through 85 degree indoor temperatures and drinking algae-filled water is nowhere near normal. The company he’s describing is severely broken if everything he’s describing is true. Most of what he describes are not normal office problems. Some of them are even health and safety violations. Working from home will only di…

Regrading the jet fumes, yeah if you're within 3-5 miles of a major airport, there's definitely jet fumes drifting around.

Source: Helped someone one weekend re-roof their house that was probably 3 miles from Logan Airport in Boston. You'd get waves of fumes slowly drifting down from the big heavy jets taking off one after another after another.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#198

Post by folkrav »

blunte wrote: post #170
folkrav wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And for the social aspect, weekend or week-long dev retreats are ideal. As much as I appreciate (most of) my coworkers, on nights and weekends I want to close my computer and spend quality time with my family, not see and talk to the same people I am already forced to talk to 35-40h a week. They might be ideal to you, but you're assuming quite a lot about everyone's situations if you think they work for everyone.

In my remote experience, I definitely don't talk to my colleagues that much. But when you're trying to build a small company, one approach is to make it feel like a family. And families always have people we like and people we like not so much. But there's something special about one unit working toward a single goal. My design is for a startup with young people. This would not work nearly as well for older people an…

> In my remote experience, I definitely don't talk to my colleagues that much.

Maybe you should, then. I speak to my colleagues at the very least 30 minutes to 1h a day, and work full remote.

> But when you're trying to build a small company, one approach is to make it feel like a family.

An approach I immensely dislike. IMHO it's a huge waste of time to pretend like most employees aren't just there to make a living. I'm not looking for a second family or to make friends, I'm here to provide my skills in exchange for money.

> But there's something special about one unit working toward a single goal.

I don't need to like you or my coworkers to do it, they all just have to be remotely competent and do a decent job at it, and I'll do the same. Let's have fun at work when at work, then let's close our computers and have our own lives, please. If friendships evolve from there, cool, but I'm not actively looking to make friends at my workplace.

> My design is for a startup with young people. This would not work nearly as well for older people and people with their own families!

I'm 30, I'm still quite young, AFAIK.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#199

Post by sologoub »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #45

Things I miss: - interacting with my colleagues, going out to lunch - the very high-speed and reliability of being on the network wire - dedicated work-space outside of my home where home-chores don't press on my mind while I'm trying to work - my commute: I cycled into work, and the daily exercise was great - a clearer separation of work and home life Things I don't miss: - interacting with my colleagues, when i don…

Pandemic is the only thing preventing organized lunch with coworkers. Nothing about wfh prevents it - just agree on a place and time.

Internet is a problem, but a solvable one - assuming you are in the US, we need competition for ISPs. I had ATT fiber for a while and it was for all practical purposes as good as office (symmetric gigabit).

Cycling has been covered :)

Separation - door closed to the space I work in works great for me. When I didn’t have that, putting everything away and leaving the work space for a few hours did the trick - it’s all in mental discipline.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#200

Post by dcolkitt »

The main reason I hope WFH is here to stay, is because there's no tech hubs left that are livable for families.

Austin and Denver use to qualify. But an out of control real estate market, basically makes it impossible to buy a home there. Every listing gets 20 all cash, no contingency offers for hundreds of thousands over list price.

Unless we embrace full remote work, the only people who will be able to work in the tech industry are either those who bought property in a tech hub before 2020. Or the young and single who are unencumbered and willing to live in small expensive apartments.

Insisting that engineers live in the Bay Area or Seattle or NYC or Austin will essentially lock out a huge pool of talent. Blame America's dysfunctional housing market and NIMBY culture. Tech generates a ton of wealth, but essentially all that wealth gets slurped up by land owners in tech hubs. The only solution to break the cycle is industry wide embrace of full remote work.

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