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Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

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Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#291

Post by Klinky »

twelve40 wrote: post #245
surgical_fire wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he seems to be trying to say that 100% remote for everyone is over. That is not a balanced take. In fact, it's pretty extreme. Plenty of companies are 0% remote, plenty of companies are 100%, and plenty others are somewhere in between. His take that 100% remote is over is bizarre and somewhat confrontational, without any data to back it up. It's plain bullshit.

fwiw my personal take is if 100% remote actually worked for the mainstream companies, all of us would have been outsourced to Kenya or Pakistan at 1/10th the cost instead of taking leisurely dog walks between the zoom meetings in Austin, but this simple thought seems to not have crossed the advocates' minds.

That would assume timezone, language, legal, cultural, governmental, and infrastructural differences don't exist between countries. Outsourcing outside your country of incorporation is a completely different challenge compared to remote work within your country of incorporation.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#292

Post by Klinky »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #278
frumper wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those things are easier to recreate remotely. You can see their actual screen instead of watching on a projector or over their shoulder. Pair programming is even easy to do remotely, there are IDEs that support it. Hop in any kind of voice call and they can talk you through what they’re doing as they’re doing it.

It's not about the activity, it's about the serendipity. There is no serendipity when you are working remotely.

Serendipity is not a competent on-boarding or training strategy.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#293

Post by Klinky »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #236
proper_elb wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, if your work is about innovation and collaboration, then it's going to be more effective to spend time together. Not convinced yet, at this point it just seems to be anecdotes, and pretty nebolous ones at that. I would be open to listen to this position if it was backed up by actual examples like "So we were working on Product X and team Y struggled with remote work in that and that way." Creativity/Innova…

I work in a small startup doing innovative software/hardware products. Some of the most 'creative' work we have ever done as a team was when the power went out and we finally spent time workshopping what a particular thing should be like with a whiteboard and pieces of paper. That was a defining moment and what we came up with on that day is kind of what we have today. Some of the best and most valuable insights in o…

I don't think that's much of an endorsement of in-office collaboration if you need the power to go out to actually focus and get work done.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#294

Post by surgical_fire »

judge2020 wrote: post #274
surgical_fire wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see nothing particularly bad about the post you shared (it's just a personal account of someone that doesn't really care about their job), and the only thing that it tied to remote work is the mention of "multiple full time jobs". But then I have to ask - if his employers are happy enough with his work to keep him around, what is the problem there? Keep in mind, I am also the sort of guy that doesn't rage against e…

> But then I have to ask - if his employers are happy enough with his work to keep him around, what is the problem there? In SW environments, having the time to do more work is supposed to mean actually completing more projects. They hire you to "perform duties for x hours a day", not "complete x tasks/x story points per sprint", so if everyone on a team is taking a similar approach, your velocity might be half or le…

At what point does this become just creating meaningless work or pursuing initiatives that mean nothing? Do we know if the companies in the example given even support employee initiatives?

And working on-site does not mean people will be more productive. A lot of people are very good at giving out the impression that they are very busy day in day out even when productivity is rock bottom.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#295

Post by Klinky »

judge2020 wrote: post #274
surgical_fire wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see nothing particularly bad about the post you shared (it's just a personal account of someone that doesn't really care about their job), and the only thing that it tied to remote work is the mention of "multiple full time jobs". But then I have to ask - if his employers are happy enough with his work to keep him around, what is the problem there? Keep in mind, I am also the sort of guy that doesn't rage against e…

> But then I have to ask - if his employers are happy enough with his work to keep him around, what is the problem there? In SW environments, having the time to do more work is supposed to mean actually completing more projects. They hire you to "perform duties for x hours a day", not "complete x tasks/x story points per sprint", so if everyone on a team is taking a similar approach, your velocity might be half or le…

> They hire you to "perform duties for x hours a day", not "complete x tasks/x story points per sprint"

Then why hire salaried workers while tracking work via sprints?

>your velocity might be half or less what it could be if everyone ended up on-site.

This is assuming more work actually gets done in an office and that offices don't have their own set of distractions. People can also slack off in an office too, or become so distracted by others that their velocity suffers.

Measuring employee performance seems to be a continual struggle that has no relation to in-office vs remote workers. If you can't accurately measure success & value generation of remote workers, you probably also can't measure office worker's either. Just checking that someone is physically in their seat doesn't actually mean they're adding tangible value.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#296

Post by Klinky »

flappyeagle wrote: post #211
frumper wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s happens and the boss also has the power to fix it. It’s part of that whole responsibility thing. If a majority of a bosses employees are defrauding them, then it sounds like they aren’t good at hiring. If it’s a minority then it’s their job to get rid of those people. It’s shocking to see people complain about coworkers literally not logging in for weeks as why remote doesn’t work. That just means your supervi…

The boss often has little power or agency to fix it. You have never been a middle manager. The amount of red tape you need to go through to fire someone for cause, cover your ass from lawsuits, etc is overwhelming. Managers are people too, often struggling because they’re squashed between challenging top down directives and the needs of all their reports.

So in dysfunctional organizations force managers to keep poorly performing employees? This is somehow related to remote work how? Such a problem exists regardless of where the employee is working.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#297

Post by judge2020 »

Klinky wrote: post #295
judge2020 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But then I have to ask - if his employers are happy enough with his work to keep him around, what is the problem there? In SW environments, having the time to do more work is supposed to mean actually completing more projects. They hire you to "perform duties for x hours a day", not "complete x tasks/x story points per sprint", so if everyone on a team is taking a similar approach, your velocity might be half or le…

> They hire you to "perform duties for x hours a day", not "complete x tasks/x story points per sprint" Then why hire salaried workers while tracking work via sprints? >your velocity might be half or less what it could be if everyone ended up on-site. This is assuming more work actually gets done in an office and that offices don't have their own set of distractions. People can also slack off in an office too, or bec…

I'm not super convinced most people will do more work on-site either, I'm just pointing out the immoral position you put yourself in by working two full-time jobs at once.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#298

Post by Klinky »

flappyeagle wrote: post #195

The era of remote work is not over. It’s just arrived. We overshot the equilibrium point by a lot during the pandemic height and that will regress back to something closer to long term trend. No matter how much the HN crowd vociferously defends remote work, it’s simply an inferior mode of operation for many creative jobs. People are not machines. We’re evolved to congregate and share space, to read body language, sha…

>I can and have hired quality developers in EU, GB, and South America at heavily discounted rates because without an office, what’s the difference?

Great, you've confirmed remote work works and can produce high quality results without an office. You've failed to bring up the other challenges beyond timezone of hiring outside your country of incorporation, it's not just timezones that creates challenges, but even timezones and keeping global teams in sync has its overhead. If you're also going to hire globally, then it looks even more daft to have people go into an office to "collaborate" with people who are in bed on the other side of the world.

"Ability to sit in an office" should never be a bullet point on anyone's resume.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#299

Post by Klinky »

judge2020 wrote: post #297
Klinky wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They hire you to "perform duties for x hours a day", not "complete x tasks/x story points per sprint" Then why hire salaried workers while tracking work via sprints? >your velocity might be half or less what it could be if everyone ended up on-site. This is assuming more work actually gets done in an office and that offices don't have their own set of distractions. People can also slack off in an office too, or bec…

I'm not super convinced most people will do more work on-site either, I'm just pointing out the immoral position you put yourself in by working two full-time jobs at once.

I agree that one should not deceive their employer. At the same time, if their employer does not notice a drop in productivity/performance from the employee, what's that say about that company's ability to actually measure employee performance?

I think a lot of companies have poor project management & employee performance measurements, so half the time, people only have half the picture or don't know what the heck people are supposed to be doing and if that's actually getting done. That only becomes more complicated when projects are abandoned and/or requirements shift every quarter.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#300

Post by surgical_fire »

remote_phone wrote: post #255
surgical_fire wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point of the article is that for team work with unclearity you are more creative by working in a physical space together. The article also has no data supporting it. Only feelings. It's very typical for these sort of articles. I am a lot more productive, and even creative working from home, where I have full control of the environment I'm in and not wasting effort on social interactions. Collaboration happens e…

> I am a lot more productive, and even creative working from home What’s the data to support this statement? It sounds like a feeling. Do you have data to support whether or not your teammates’ productivity are affected by you being remote?

Maybe you should have read the post you're replying to in its entirety.
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