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People love working remotely

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Re: People love working remotely

#211

Post by jacobush »

g051051 wrote: post #125
wolco wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Take on all issues and then drop them. Seems like a quick route to the unemployment line...no thanks!

Yeah, sometimes.

Re: People love working remotely

#212

Post by sillyquiet »

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."

Ours do sit in the same open-plan desks the rest of us do, but naturally (as others have remarked) they spend all of their time in meetings anyway and don't actually USE their desks. And again, naturally, they have a whole bunch of meeting rooms and 'private collaboration spaces' marked off for their exclusive use.

Re: People love working remotely

#213

Post by Tehchops »

gexla wrote: post #67

This piece has the feeling of being written by "every Friday is Hawaiian T-shirt day" after his employer went all remote and he needed a new task. I have worked remotely more than not and it's not ideal. I suspect that if teleportation machines existed, then remote work wouldn't be a thing. Once you leave the office for the day (or leave the house to go to the office) then the logistical problems start (where do I fi…

Sour grapes on the part of anecdotally having a non-ideal living space != "remote work sucks"

Re: People love working remotely

#214

Post by davidjnelson »

jayd16 wrote: post #128
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…

I'm not sure about the 15 minute meetings that could have been emails, however, I will say that pair programming and XP are useful tools. I'm not sure how easy that is to replicate in a fully remote office.

Super easy remote. Hard in an office because people feel like they have to find a conference room. It’s weird people blab loudly all day about nothing but look at you weird if you are talking quietly to someone about actual work on a video chat.

Re: People love working remotely

#215

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

The usual Agile Methodologies (the manifesto had something to say about methodologies) have all the wrong meetings. The only ones that can correct the developers course are a sprint away or after the feature is complete, while all the daily or weekly ones are pure bullshit where nobody present can decide anything.

Re: People love working remotely

#216

Post by oneepic »

ptero wrote: post #9

Remote work can be great, but it requires two key things. First is the ability to actually do useful work at home or other non-office location. This is not hard (I suspect some people working remotely do goof off, but I suspect those people are not super useful sitting in the office either). Second, much harder, is the employer support. Direct manager of remote workers should know how to manage them (which is a rare…

>First is the ability to actually do useful work at home or other non-office location. This is not hard (I suspect some people working remotely do goof off, but I suspect those people are not super useful sitting in the office either)

You'd be wrong to suspect that. I am very productive at work but I just end up getting distracted at home. It is hard. It's a mentality thing. Additionally, when I'm at the office, I can talk to another person and just ask a question in 5 seconds that would take possibly hours to get a reply otherwise.

Re: People love working remotely

#217

Post by Phlarp »

turingbike wrote: post #204
jackmodern wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Adding on to this;

Linked-in recruiters. Say what you will about the constant cold emailing, if you set sane guidelines for them (only interested in 99-100% remote positions with comp above $x, using y or z technologies) there is an entire industry of people who will go and do a lot of the work for you. Just make a copy/pasta of your desires and reply to their copy/pasta with it; ask for job descriptions up front along with comp ranges, once they show something you like you can move forward with actually getting on the phone with them.

This shouldn't be your only lead generation tool during a job search, but it is a ruthlessly effective force multiplier.

Re: People love working remotely

#218

Post by davidw »

dls2016 wrote: post #186
wolco wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is straight out of the CIA Simple Sabotage Field Manual, see Section 4.11 General Interference with Organizations and Production . 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."

> "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."

Memories work in funny ways. The first thing that jumped to my mind was the Asterix book where the Romans capture the druid (Getafix, in the English versions) and want him to make the magic potion. He insists that he must have fresh strawberries to make it, which are out of season. He doesn't really need them, it turns out, but it delays the whole project as the Romans dispatch someone to points far to the south to try and fetch some and bring them back while they're still fresh.

Re: People love working remotely

#219

Post by Phlarp »

JSavageReal wrote: post #203
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-te…

Get it in writing.

Re: People love working remotely

#220

Post by davidjnelson »

ken wrote: post #174
Agentlien wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a private office for a couple of years. I've also worked in open plan landscapes as well as offices with 4-8 people. This year, however, I've started working from home a lot. I like it much more than any of the above and generally get so much more done. I can relax and breathe in my own home. Make some tea and sit in the garden when I need to think. My focus, productivity and well being have been through the ro…

Maybe I'm missing it, but these still sound like variations on the theme of "my office is lousy so working from home is relatively nicer". An hour commute is just nuts. According to statistics I found, that's more than double the average. I've worked at places with a 5 minute commute, and they're great. I realize not everyone has infinite flexibility in where they live, but a workplace would have to be pretty amazing…

An hour commute is short in the Bay Area... A 35 minute drive will literally take two hours if you have to arrive at 10.
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