291–300 of 369 posts
Having millions of people regularly commuting into major cities is a disaster. You create all this traffic, congestion on trains, sometimes people packed liked sardines for what? To sit in an office and work less than you would in the peace and quiet at home. Much better if governments encouraged people to work from home, maybe have local hubs where people can go to if they can't work at home. Cut down on the traffic…
https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2019/07/25/governor-baker-wo...
I have been working remotely for 3-4 years, and I am currently job hunting. I did not like working remotely honestly. As an extrovert, I did not like the isolation. However, the major drawback was not being able to steer any of the tech/political discussion because I was remote. I had poor managers/CTO that needed a good smack to the head because they were too scatterbrained, but I was not there to do it. Impossible…
The cost savings to employers is so extraordinary ($0 per square foot in office space, $0 on HVAC, electricity, $0 on corporate wifi and the building's ethernet, $0 on cleaning bills, $0 on toilet paper, ink, toner, desks, etc etc - the employer literally is happy to buy all of the above), and to employees a free 5-20% reduction of work hours due to the total loss of mandatory unpaid commute, plus all transportation…
In places that I've worked, WFH is usually reserved for divisions that are expected to be intrinsically-motivated high performers. Some companies can afford to be staffed with nothing but these types of people; other companies are not so lucky.
WFH only works if the people that are W-ingFH are motivated enough by their work to do it without being supervised.
And for some job roles in some organizations, the savings from not having to hold an office for a role, are more than offset by the lost productivity from having that role as a remote hire.
I'm not trying to say that all HN-ers are magical special large-brained unicorn employees; but I've worked at several places where certain key roles are staffed by people that couldn't figure out how to effectively work remotely if their lives depended on it.
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> 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…
> There's nothing wrong about a multi day email chain. Email chains can work for some things, but they mostly suck compared to face to face meetings. You never know if someone else is silent because they agree, they haven't read the whole email, or they haven't taken time to write a response. Most things able to be solved by email chains are better off in some sort of issue tracking or wiki system.
People get so stressed out from commuting, even if they don't realize it.
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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…
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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.
I was mostly just making the counter point, however to expand on this, at least with the email thread you can take longer to compose your response or go talk to someone about it if you think it's important. It's viewed a bit weirder to follow up a face-to-face meeting with your counter points in an email.
But I actually just think communication is hard for a lot of people. Locking people in a room and expecting them to come up with a decision is a pretty poor way to work. Combining both text and talking, and giving enough time between discussion and decisions is probably a winner.