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People love working remotely

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Re: People love working remotely

#201

Post by ryneandal »

war1025 wrote: post #191
ken wrote: post #19

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.

I have a private office, but we also work from home two days a week (often more than that as various things come up for people). I come in to the office every day because my wife stays home with our 3 kids. Work from home when home is four people that want your attention doesn't work out very well. The few times I tried it, everyone just got frustrated that I was present but not available. Maybe in a couple years whe…

The difference for many people is more than a ten minute commute. I'd enjoy 20 minutes a day of quiet time, but in my situation it'd be an hour per day.

The trick to making family understand when you're on the clock is training them to treat the closed office door as though it was locked. If you come out of the room, your attention is free game at that point, but once that door is closed, you're not home. Takes awhile of effective communication and discipline, but once enforced makes remote work incredibly enjoyable, even with family at home.

Re: People love working remotely

#202

Post by Izkata »

LanceH wrote: post #63
g051051 wrote: post #16

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…

25 years of this and not once has someone responsible for implementing the open plan included themselves in that plan. Sales and marketing somehow require offices as well. I've heard of the mythical "president in a cubicle" but never seen it. I would really have more respect if they just came out and said, "we're going cheap."

For us, everyone except HR and Accounts are on the open floor. Even the executives/VPs have to look for seating.

Re: People love working remotely

#203

Post by JSavageReal »

g051051 wrote: post #16

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…

This has basically been the story of every job I've had, except instead of being 100% remote I was wfh once or twice per week.

I'd join a company under the condition that they allowed flexible hours and wfh. Then 6 months later managers would change and all of a sudden the way we'd been operating would no longer be acceptable. Always the person leading the charge towards eliminating wfh and remote work is some non-technical idiot who wants to make his mark by demonstrating his "leadership skills" and has no idea what engineers actually do.

So D don't even take promises for flexible hours and remote work seriously anymore unless it's a fully distributed team. I hope the trend of increasingly distributed workforces continues to rise so that developers don't have to deal with this "ass-in-seat" nonsense anymore.

Re: People love working remotely

#204

Post by turingbike »

jackmodern wrote: post #167
eloff wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to find a new job. I've worked fully remote my whole career, first by necessity and then by choice. There are lots of companies out there.

how do you find those companies?

* Search "Who's Hiring?" for remote - https://hnjobs.emilburzo.com/#%22remote%22

https://weworkremotely.com

https://remoteok.io/

and of course, word-of-mouth / loose social connections.

Re: People love working remotely

#205

Post by miguelmota »

Working remote for 4 out of 5 days is the sweet spot for me. It’s good to come into the office and do a brainstorming and sprint planning session over a physical whiteboard once a week, but also to just do relationship maintenance with colleagues and talk to other people since loneliness can be a real problem over time when working remote all the time.

Re: People love working remotely

#206

Post by ebiester »

smush wrote: post #198
ebiester wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a poor understanding of "comprehensive documentation." You should absolutely be keeping documentation. However, you should not require hundreds of pages of specs and design documents before a single line of code is written. Instead, documentation should be written at the same time as the code, and should follow what is actually needed for and by developers and the organization rather than being subject to a "…

I wish the agile manifesto had included a bullet point that said 'favor working code over comprehensive documentation%' % where working code != the code will work if all stars align and no invalid data is input and comprehensive documentation != a single typed character more than what is forced out of your tortured fingers by those who have to support your code at 2AM I love my job :)

* "while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more" suggests that you should do enough of the items on the left such that the job gets done.

* "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done." implies that the ops team also needs to be given the environment and support they need from development.

* "Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility." where "technical excellence" implies an understanding of working code that isn't dependent on valid data.

* "At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly." means that if ops can't do its job, then the development team needs to reflect and adjust its behavior accordingly.

So, sadly, they tried. We just went too far in the other direction in some organizations, and that needs to be stopped. If it isn't working, change it - agile shouldn't be in the way.

Re: People love working remotely

#207

Post by Tehchops »

ken wrote: post #19

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.

I still vastly prefer the flexibility, cost-advantages, and productivity gains from remote work.

That being said, you have to invest in it. Have a separate room with a door. Spend some money on good ergonomics. Have a good, stable internet connection.

Re: People love working remotely

#208

Post by akavi »

LanceH wrote: post #63
g051051 wrote: post #16

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…

25 years of this and not once has someone responsible for implementing the open plan included themselves in that plan. Sales and marketing somehow require offices as well. I've heard of the mythical "president in a cubicle" but never seen it. I would really have more respect if they just came out and said, "we're going cheap."

Not true of any of the four places I've worked, startup and FAANG. Directors (at FAANG) and CEOs (at startups) sat at the same kind of desk the rest of us did (though of course, spent the vast majority of time in meetings)

Re: People love working remotely

#209

Post by ebiester »

larrywright wrote: post #195
ebiester wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a poor understanding of "comprehensive documentation." You should absolutely be keeping documentation. However, you should not require hundreds of pages of specs and design documents before a single line of code is written. Instead, documentation should be written at the same time as the code, and should follow what is actually needed for and by developers and the organization rather than being subject to a "…

This is a problem with reading documents without understanding the time and context they were written in. If you’re a twentysomething developer who’s never worked in a process and documentation-heavy organization, the agile manifesto will sound like it is advocating something it is not. It was a reaction to the prevailing thinking of the time.

On top of that, they were looking for brevity over writing a novel, considering that it came out of a group of like-minded people over a long weekend.

Re: People love working remotely

#210

Post by g051051 »

umvi wrote: post #145
ilikehurdles wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agile introduces and requires meeting time. If you were doing Just Shut Up And Get It Done before, Agile is definitely meeting-heavy. Agile is agile compared to Waterfall, but overall it’s a process of no one trusting the workers to take on work and hit deadlines if they’re not in meetings telling you about it. The only constant between every Agile organization I’ve been in is the forced meetings. Everything else was…

> but overall it’s a process of no one trusting the workers to take on work and hit deadlines if they’re not in meetings telling you about it. I mean... sometimes you need to course-correct, no? And cross pollination is useful, isn't it? "Just Shut Up And Get It Done" workflow means that people might be spinning their wheels building the wrong thing (or duplicate things) in their silos. Come on, there's got to be a f…

Meetings? Sure. Rituals? No. We have meetings because we're supposed to have meetings, whether we need them or not.
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