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People love working remotely

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Re: People love working remotely

#281

Post by ghaff »

weaksauce wrote: post #236
RyanDagg wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#6 might be the only real chance the US has of having less divisive politics. Moving the upper middle class and wealthy out of cities could change the game entirely by making the political extremes less concentrated geographically.

rural broadband would need to be improved for this to work in general.

5G may help to at least some degree. Most people don't need Gigabit or anything like that. But it's nice to have a better alternative to satellite and (sometimes) hotspots which are your only options if you can't get broadband today.

Re: People love working remotely

#282

Post by ghaff »

snlnspc wrote: post #227
ken wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Lower cost to the company. Private offices are expensive to build and maintain. You're just pushing that cost to the employee. Are you paying them the amount saved, to furnish their own private offices? Or are you just penalizing the worker to save a buck? > 3. Job flexibility. Home workers have (or will have) more options for employment. I have not seen this. Most companies still don't offer remote work. > 4. N…

> 1. Lower cost -> You're just pushing that cost to the employee. This one does seem to be a relatively common thing, at least in recent job posts I've seen. I can imagine it's not all that common if you take a step back, but quite a few companies have given what I consider very generous monthly stipends for use in personal offices or (co-)workspace expenses. I agree with the rest.

If you're actually working from home as opposed to a co-working space, home office expenses are usually easily offset by commuting expenses, lunches, even clothes that you incur by going into an office.

I mostly work from home and incremental work-related expenses are pretty small. Maybe I buy some computer gear I wouldn't have if I worked at home less. But the expenses are pretty much trivial relative to commuting.

Re: People love working remotely

#283

Post by naravara »

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…

>The big boss said "a 15 minute fact-to-face is better than a multi-day email chain".

If only we had some sort of technology that allowed us to be able to get ahem FaceTime ahem while remote.

What a wondrous world that could be!

Re: People love working remotely

#284

Post by JoeAltmaier »

dustinmoris wrote: post #51
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…

> The big boss said "a 15 minute fact-to-face is better than a multi-day email chain" I can't believe that people who are so out of touch with reality are still given so much responsibility at companies which they effectively unknowingly misuse to make everyone's life miserable. There's nothing wrong about a multi day email chain. Sometimes it's the best communication tool, because non-critical/important things can b…

Managers meet - that's what they do. They can be profoundly out of touch with what engineers do. Thus, stupid statements like that one.

Re: People love working remotely

#285

Post by hombre_fatal »

jimcsharp wrote: post #257
Buttons840 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone ever had a company forum? Like Discourse or similar? That seems like a better format. Chat + forum.

I think that's what Slack is supposed to be - especially with Threads. So far it's just IRC with gifs where I work.

Slack has nothing in common with forums except that they named that feature "threads." It's only to pull a chat convo aside in a chat app.

Re: People love working remotely

#286

Post by wrestlerman »

I've seen there are plenty of comments that disagree with that statement. I agree, though.

I love working remotely. I've been working remotely for a bit less than a year now. I had some few months break at the beginning of this year where I was working on my own product, but I was still at home.

Why do I love it? Well, my wife is staying at home with me and we get to spend so much more time together. I think over that period of time we've got closer together. We can chat during the day, eat meals together and stuff like that, it's super cool.

More reasons? If I can work asynchronously (not being dependent on the rest of my team) I can schedule my day according to my needs. Need a one hour walk outside? Well, why not:) Even though it's not my company I'm working for I kind feel like I am the boss. I don't have people staring at my screen, I don't have people talking next to me, I can go to a shop and prepare a nice breakfast if I want to. It's really good.

I do agree that it gets a bit boring without a chitchat with colleagues. But I try to compensate for it by meeting with my friends and family regularly.

Re: People love working remotely

#287

Post by scient »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #136
pkalinowski wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I log off, I do Command+Q on Slack and e-mail. Nobody can reach me after work through work channels. I simulate leaving the office.

I really need to find myself in a position where I have no responsibilities besides just writing code.

And finding that place also means you will never be anything more than that. Thats what always strikes me about these complaints about having to do a little extra, or stuff thats not directly in your job description etc. And then complain about how your manager sucks because you are not valued or promoted fast enough.

Trust me, most engineers are not THAT good that their code writing contributions alone would justify high career leaps. Even the highly technical leaders need to do a lot of brain work thats not necessarily coding - like architecture design and whatnot, and most of that requires a lot of interaction, discussions and other soft skills.

Re: People love working remotely

#288

Post by wolco »

thanatropism wrote: post #269
ownagefool wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Face to face meetings also suck because the extroverts own the floor. You don't know if people didn't pipe up because they agree, or because they aren't rude enough to stop Bob talking, and now it's too late.

I know both extroverts and introverts who are really bad at email type text communication.

Equal playing field.

Re: People love working remotely

#289

Post by acak »

davidw wrote: post #218
dls2016 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I remember this! It is quite hilarious.

Re: People love working remotely

#290

Post by codingdave »

shrimpx wrote: post #273
codingdave wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not me. Not most of my remote team. Most of them do have a private office, in their own home. The flexibility to work when you want, where you want, live where you want, visit family without needing to take vacation, etc. That all adds up to a great working life. One of our guys even spent the summer road tripping out of a custom camper van, and working the whole time from various parks. The problem people have with…

How do you visit family without needing to take vacation? I guess you're blurring the line between "full-time from a stable remote (home/coworking/etc.) office" and full on "digital nomad". I work full-time remote and I think there's a huge difference between working from a stable office and wandering around working from a camper van or ducking out for personal travel while on the clock? It's hard to imagine that the…

Everyone I visit has an internet connection and a quiet place I can work. I spend much of the day working, and then walk out and spend time with family. And yes, I am blurring those lines. That was kind of my point - that working remote can be far more than just locking yourself to an office in your home and working the same as you would in an office.

Sure, if you take business days off to fly across the country, that could go badly. But I tend to travel on weekends. And my family understands that I might get a message and go hop onto work for an hour or two.

Most of the remote workers I know would turn down a job that expected 8 hour shifts of "butt-in-seat"-style working environments. The whole concept of "on the clock" is alien to how my teams work.

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