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Shopify Goes Digital by Default

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Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#291

Post by mrich »

whateveracct wrote: post #232
skwb wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the optimum is 3 days of WFH, with the remainder being spent in person. For most people, you're going to have work you can do on your own. You probably only need a little bit of help here and there. The office specific days, you spend on meetings, working more directly with people. I think this would also significantly reduce stress on employees. You could live in more affordable areas, and take commuter tran…

That defeats a lot of the benefit of remote work though. My output in 3 days of work is gonna be a week's worth in my experience. Padding it with face time is mostly me eating a loss. 2 days/week working synchronously with people? Of meetings? I can't remember a time when a project I've worked on needed that to succeed.

It certainly depends on seniority and experience, the more you have the easier it is to work on your own. You don't need much guidance anymore and you know what communication and planning is needed in advance, so you can do it in batches.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#292

Post by mifeng »

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…

Don't work for a company with 50k employees. Don't live in a big city.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#293

Post by dmode »

Majromax wrote: post #206
dmode wrote: post #77

People have commented the impact of this shift on SF/NYC etc, but based on this announcement the impact on smaller tech hubs will be even more devastating. Why would you now open a office in a smaller tech hub when you can hire someone from anywhere ? The impact of this in Canada can be huge

> Why would you now open a office in a smaller tech hub when you can hire someone from anywhere ? The impact of this in Canada can be huge Why not? The wage differential will still apply: why hire someone remotely from SF when you can hire someone remotely from Ottawa at 70% the wage?

Why to open a office anywhere if you can just hire remote ? Why to have a hub in Vancouver or Raleigh etc when you can hire from anywhere ?

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#294

Post by skwb »

whateveracct wrote: post #232
skwb wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the optimum is 3 days of WFH, with the remainder being spent in person. For most people, you're going to have work you can do on your own. You probably only need a little bit of help here and there. The office specific days, you spend on meetings, working more directly with people. I think this would also significantly reduce stress on employees. You could live in more affordable areas, and take commuter tran…

That defeats a lot of the benefit of remote work though. My output in 3 days of work is gonna be a week's worth in my experience. Padding it with face time is mostly me eating a loss. 2 days/week working synchronously with people? Of meetings? I can't remember a time when a project I've worked on needed that to succeed.

I can think of MANY projects I've worked on (and currently working on) where other people are frankly a distraction, and I just need to focus on implementing a few features on my own. But you then need to coordinate a lot in person to figure our the next steps.

I think this set up provides much of the benefit of remote (greater flexibility in personal life commitments) while retaining the necessary components that many often cite for why remote isn't a good option (no face to face meetings). The point however is that it's not supposed to replace either in person or fully remote, but find more choices firms have in their staffing configurations. More choice means there will be greater market fit for both job seekers and employers.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#295

Post by cletus »

dominotw wrote: post #167
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…

> leads to thinly-veiled, self-serving, biased arguments and proclamations of the benefits to everyone. > So I've now been WFH for 2 months and honestly I hate it. > I just don't think a company with 50,000+ employees can operate this way indefinitely. ok. Why do you consider your arguments against WFH not biased and useful. "other side is biased" ...quite funny :D

> ok. Why do you consider your arguments against WFH not biased and useful.

Because what I'm saying is objectively true: physical colocation with your coworkers is inherently easier to work with than working remotely and no one in their right mind disputes that. The best you can argue for WFH-first is that it can be made to work.

Your other clue is the choice of language. I said, for example, "I hate WFH" and (paraphrased) "I like having a catered office". These are my personal preferences. You can't really argue that it isn't my personal preference. You can argue that those preferences don't work for you, which is 100% fine and indisputable.

In comparison, so many things I see written about WFH are stated with broad generalizations of "WFH is better because ..." when you can clearly tell that really means "I want to WFH and I'm going to argue my preference as being a general good".

You've had other people in this thread and elsewhere agree that a mixed WFH/in-person team is (to quote another commenter here) "the worst of both worlds". If you take that as true it then means that for people to most effectively WFH they need everyone else they're working with to do it as well. It's intellectually dishonest.

To be clear, if you can make WFH work for you and you like doing it, great. I hope you find an employer who works like that or will allow at least some of the team to work remotely. Prognostications that Covid-19 will lead to some seachange in WFH-first employment strikes me as unsubstantiated wishful thinking however.

Just go and look at all the blog posts and articles written about how to make WFH work. Why aren't there just as many (or more) articles about making WFO (Working From Office) work if the benefits are so self-apparent?

There are certain kinds of work that could be remote and would be just fine to do so but they still generally aren't (eg call center work; apart from obvious offshoring cases, a lot of US domestic call center work is still from an office for some reason). But I don't put software engineering at scale in that category.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#296

Post by pb7 »

landryraccoon wrote: post #240
cletus wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not trying to be facetious - you seriously can't provide your own meals and snacks working from home? Of course I can but I just don't want to. This isn't about being cheap or lazy (although I'm guilty of both to varying degrees). The biggest benefit of having a catered office is the lack of having to make a decision about what to eat. I'll just eat what they're serving that day. I'm a big believer in decision…

> I live in NYC because I want to live in NYC. It doesn't make NYC sound very appealing if working from your home in NYC is hellish. Working from my home in the Bay is actually quite nice. The best part is getting an hour of my day back because I don't have to commute to work. That 1 hour commute probably added more stress to my day than any other hour.

I love my home in SF and have been deeply enjoying the COVID-induced work from home life. Many people don't invest in making their home comfortable and enjoyable to be in and it shows when it comes to these types of conversations.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#297

Post by skwb »

mrich wrote: post #291
whateveracct wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That defeats a lot of the benefit of remote work though. My output in 3 days of work is gonna be a week's worth in my experience. Padding it with face time is mostly me eating a loss. 2 days/week working synchronously with people? Of meetings? I can't remember a time when a project I've worked on needed that to succeed.

It certainly depends on seniority and experience, the more you have the easier it is to work on your own. You don't need much guidance anymore and you know what communication and planning is needed in advance, so you can do it in batches.

I completely agree - this certainly isn't a configuration I would think works well for management. Meeting in person certainly are highly valued for even the most junior managers.

But for a lot of white collar professionals at an associate to mid senior level, there's plenty of work that you should be able to do independently.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#298

Post by pm90 »

cletus wrote: post #295
dominotw wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> leads to thinly-veiled, self-serving, biased arguments and proclamations of the benefits to everyone. > So I've now been WFH for 2 months and honestly I hate it. > I just don't think a company with 50,000+ employees can operate this way indefinitely. ok. Why do you consider your arguments against WFH not biased and useful. "other side is biased" ...quite funny :D

> ok. Why do you consider your arguments against WFH not biased and useful. Because what I'm saying is objectively true: physical colocation with your coworkers is inherently easier to work with than working remotely and no one in their right mind disputes that. The best you can argue for WFH-first is that it can be made to work. Your other clue is the choice of language. I said, for example, "I hate WFH" and (paraph…

To address your comment about wfo... it works since it’s been the default way that people have worked since the industrial revolution. As such we have institutional collective knowledge and culture on how to make it work. The blog posts about making wfh work are going against a couple of centuries of knowledge, which is why you see the difference.

But to address a finer point: there is still a lot of activity about open vs closed plan etc. So wfo is not a fully solved problem either!

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#299

Post by dmode »

cletus wrote: post #222
kjakm wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

> I'm not trying to be facetious - you seriously can't provide your own meals and snacks working from home? Of course I can but I just don't want to. This isn't about being cheap or lazy (although I'm guilty of both to varying degrees). The biggest benefit of having a catered office is the lack of having to make a decision about what to eat. I'll just eat what they're serving that day. I'm a big believer in decision…

This is a bad take. SF didn't have any tech industry before the last decade, and yet still had the second highest population density. Majority of people live in SF and Bay Area, because they want to live there

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#300

Post by tinyhouse »

This is huge because Shopify is a big company and will likely get much bigger in the next few years. Most fully remote companies are small. We cannot know for sure if it will stick. I remember Yahoo telling their employees to return to the office. But looks like this time it's going to be different.
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