Shopify Goes Digital by Default • Hacker News Board

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#211

Post by PascLeRasc » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

fourmyle wrote: post #137

People are going to change their tune once the paycuts start coming. There is no reason to pay SF money to someone living in the Midwest. $80k a year is comfortable most places. I hope remote first people like the suburbs and country because there is no reason to live in the city with no office. The real truth though is most people are far less productive remote because it requires proactive communication and self di…

I'm hoping rent prices in SF will go down. I'd love to live there and work in academia but that doesn't seem feasible.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#212

Post by munificent » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

kjakm wrote: post #173

cletus wrote: post #141

So I've now been WFH for 2 months and honestly I hate it. Work was already flexible enough such that if you wanted to WFH you could. By convention, people would most often WFH on Wednesdays. I liked this timing of people doing it at the same time. But communication and collaboration is just much harder work remote and you can't change my mind. I'm sure you can work hard to make it almost as good but it's never going…

>> I of course miss the meals and snacks. I'm not trying to be facetious - you seriously can't provide your own meals and snacks working from home? >> Many people who work at these companies live in big cities where they don't have huge amounts of space and it's not conducive to being productivity, particularly if you live with other people, if you can't get some form of separation. Do you live in that space because…

Food is the classic economy of scale.

Yes, I can prepare my own lunch. But it takes about 24 hours to make a vat of delicious homemade ramen that will feed 500 people. Do you know how long it takes to make a single serving of that same ramen? ...About 24 hours.

Likewise, an office with 100 people can easily have a whole variety of fresh fruit and produce to spontaneously choose and snack from and most will get eaten before any goes to waste. When I buy produce, I have to get exactly what I'm going to eat which means my weekly trip locks me into exactly one set of produce that I'm stuck with.

The set of foods that scale down efficiently is a very small subset of the set of foods that I like to eat.

Also, pragmatically, the free food was a perk of the job that I factored into the compensation package when I took the job. Losing access to the free food is effectively the same as taking a pay cut or giving up a couple of vacation days. Given the state of the economy, I think this is actually a reasonable way for the business to save money right now, and I'm much rather give up lunches than see layoffs happen, but the compensation package has shrunk.

Also, there is real value in not having to come up with new food to eat.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#213

Post by __turbobrew__ » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

fourmyle wrote: post #110

kylestlb wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been crowing about this for years now. WFH by default could easily relieve pressure from the housing market at least in places where there are lots of people who have a job where they can WFH. I would absolutely live 2 hours from an office if I only had to go in once every week or two. I'd live further if it was once a month.

Gonna be great when you get a pay cut according to your new housing costs.

pull the 'ol Gitlab tactic

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#214

Post by alexbanks » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #198

alexbanks wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you describe why you couldn't spend a day in a boardroom _virtually_? Or how developers involved in "requirement analysis" need to be in the same room?

It isn't impossible, just more difficult, mostly based on human factors. Say you have developers who don't like confrontation. During an in-person requirement analysis, you might see their irritation in the in-person meeting and extract their opinion. Hidden behind screens, anything no matter how absurd, might get approved. They might also clarify requirements less. This is happening on my team, as we developers chal…

I think that blaming remote work to mask people/team problems that existed in person is unwise. If your team isn't comfortable being legitimate and honest during requirement analysis, is it worth having? If, in person, the process breaks down into "What the team lead can notice about the team's body language/behavior during requirement analysis", I would probably suggest that there needs to be a fundamental rethinking of the purpose of that meeting. And this is why, I think, the problems being blamed on remote work are usually much larger/harder problems that can get swept under the in person rug.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#215

Post by CyanLite2 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

baron816 wrote: post #194

newfeatureok wrote: post #90

Remote-first is the future. I'm not sure why anyone would be against it. No one is forcing you to work from home. From a compliance and operations perspective a remote-first company is effectively forced to do a lot of things many companies do not or will not undertake: - Make meetings accessible to everyone - Communicate more effectively and transparently internal to the organization (and even externally, for the ad…

Imagine being the only employee on the team who wants to work in the office. That could be a problem. You’re young, maybe just out of college, and moving to a city hoping to form new connections with people. Yet, everyone’s now working from home. You don’t have any real opportunity to build relationships with your coworkers. Work becomes a much more dreary experience at that point. No one to each lunch with. No inter…

This is literally the top selling point for getting a WeWork or some other co-work locale.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#216

Post by throwawaysea » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

Great news. I am looking forward to a decentralized society, where people can choose to live where they want to live. Not everything has to happen in San Francisco or Seattle. Many will cherish the freedom to live near friends/family elsewhere, or in a different political climate, or with a more rural lifestyle. For forward thinking companies that lean into remote work, it will be a huge pull for talent away from companies that may not make this change.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#217

Post by pm90 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

tomashertus wrote: post #203

cletus wrote: post #141

So I've now been WFH for 2 months and honestly I hate it. Work was already flexible enough such that if you wanted to WFH you could. By convention, people would most often WFH on Wednesdays. I liked this timing of people doing it at the same time. But communication and collaboration is just much harder work remote and you can't change my mind. I'm sure you can work hard to make it almost as good but it's never going…

I feel genuinely sorry for all the freshmen who enter a job market at this time. I can't imagine having my first full-time job remote only.

Well maybe they are better off not knowing. Or that they see it as the new normal. Could go either way.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#218

Post by ponker » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #176

r00fus wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people who work at these companies live in big cities where they don't have huge amounts of space and it's not conducive to being productivity, particularly if you live with other people, if you can't get some form of separation. Could this be the tipping point to a sustained exodus from an urban kind of lifestyle? (spoken as someone who likes/values density)

The idea that this will result in an exodus from urban areas presupposes that jobs are the reason people moved to the urban areas, rather than social, leisure, or cultural reasons. That's highly arguable. Young people like cities, that's where the girls and the parties are. That's been true for a really long time.

I lived in San Francisco solely for work. If I could work from home 3 days a week, I would have lived in Marin County and done a 2 hour commute twice a week, and maybe spend a weekend in the City from time to time.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#219

Post by bcrosby95 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

dan_quixote wrote: post #166

cletus wrote: post #141

So I've now been WFH for 2 months and honestly I hate it. Work was already flexible enough such that if you wanted to WFH you could. By convention, people would most often WFH on Wednesdays. I liked this timing of people doing it at the same time. But communication and collaboration is just much harder work remote and you can't change my mind. I'm sure you can work hard to make it almost as good but it's never going…

| I've found that advocates of WFH are mostly motivated by that's what they want to do more than anything else. I've heard endless people state that WFH productivity is through the roof with absolutely no evidence. And lets not pretend that we can accurately measure productivity of software devs - we've all been down this road with agile.

I've also heard anti-WFH people state that its a bad idea. No one has any evidence. Just anecdotes.

I think part of the shift is because companies are realizing it isn't as bad as they expected. A friend works for a company that announced they will allow 100% WFH in the future too. The CEO said she thought WFH would cause a 50% loss of productivity. But after 2 months of it, no significant loss in velocity has been noticed. Not just for development work, but for other office work as well.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#220

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

look_lookatme wrote: post #121

alexbanks wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revenue is king. Yahoo pulled it as a last ditch "I don't know, maybe this is the problem" attempt. If companies going full time remote find that they're struggling to perform they'll probably switch back. I think if they just continue the same or improve, definitely not.

It was also a personality-driven decision (Mayer).

I disagree with this. I think anyone who came in to the Yahoo CEO position when Mayer did would have been absolutely insane to allow the work from home policy to continue:

1. It was obvious from the data that tons of people were taking advantage of WFH at Yahoo (e.g. never logging into the corporate network)

2. Easy to make the argument that the problem was Yahoo management didn't manage WFH well, but even if one takes that as a truism (I'd say especially if one takes that as a truism) seems like the fastest way to fix that would have been to at least get everyone in the office.

WFH can work great, or it can be a total failure, but the worst in any case would be to come into a specific situation and not make decisions based on the data for that company at hand and instead base them off some broad "industry trends" standards.