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Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

theguardian.com

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Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#31

Post by darkwater »

swiley wrote: post #20
codingdave wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it is just the concept of the vocal minority. People who are seeing the world go their way tend to just enjoy the ride. People who don't like how it is going tend to be quite vocal about their displeasure. Minority opinions can be quite loud, in any aspect of our society. Personally, I want to respect our differences. I support people figuring out where they want to work and finding companies who let them…

WFH is an instant 13-20% raise for most people because they're not compensated for the commute. The same economic effect that results in SWEs being paid well above minimum wage will also result in widespread remote work. If you like socializing you can still do that, in fact you can do more of it since you're not spending an hour or two every day in a car, alone.

I don't know where you live but you should also keep in mind that in many places of the world commuting is done within a metropolitan area, and usually with public transportation (trains, buses, subways etc) so while it still takes away time it's not that catastrophic on the environmental side. And there are people who likes to physically separate their personal life from their work life. And I'm a pre-pandemic remote worker who used to work in the office, and I can see the good and the bad sides of both positions. I don't really understand why WFH enthusiasts are usually so radical on this topic.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#33

Post by [deleted] »

SilverRed wrote: post #2

It almost feels like there is a conspiracy brewing to talk down on WFH despite most employees loving it. I suspect that the commercial property owners and middle managers are behind this because they are the ones who have mostly lost out here. The cat is out of the bag I think. Once people can work from home in a post covid world where they can socialize normally, I think many companies, and especially in software de…

[deleted]

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#34

Post by swiley »

darkwater wrote: post #31
swiley wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WFH is an instant 13-20% raise for most people because they're not compensated for the commute. The same economic effect that results in SWEs being paid well above minimum wage will also result in widespread remote work. If you like socializing you can still do that, in fact you can do more of it since you're not spending an hour or two every day in a car, alone.

I don't know where you live but you should also keep in mind that in many places of the world commuting is done within a metropolitan area, and usually with public transportation (trains, buses, subways etc) so while it still takes away time it's not that catastrophic on the environmental side. And there are people who likes to physically separate their personal life from their work life. And I'm a pre-pandemic remot…

Sure that's the case in most of the world, but in the US you're spending an hour and a half alone in a car unless you've structured your life around avoiding that.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#35

Post by lordnacho »

SilverRed wrote: post #2

It almost feels like there is a conspiracy brewing to talk down on WFH despite most employees loving it. I suspect that the commercial property owners and middle managers are behind this because they are the ones who have mostly lost out here. The cat is out of the bag I think. Once people can work from home in a post covid world where they can socialize normally, I think many companies, and especially in software de…

I think commercial property in the old form is screwed. Nearly every office job type firm is now offering reduced time in the office, with a few standouts still holding on to full time on site. That's my personal survey anyway, having talked to quite a number of them over the last few weeks. You can tell on some hiring managers that they'd really rather have people in the office, but they can see where the market is going.

The number of fully remote firms has gone up, but what's also interesting is that many old firms are allowing half remote. So two or three days in the office, the rest at home. A lot of these types of firms will change the space they need. More fun space, meeting rooms, because that's what you'll be doing on the days in, and less traditional floor.

The other big losers from this are the food and coffee shops in town centre. I went in to chat with some, and it's a bloodbath.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#36

Post by anthropodie »

It will take years before we have settled on work from home or office. I don't think a mix will exist, either entire team will WFH or WFO.

The good thing is the experiment has started. Many companies are becoming remote friendly. The long term effects of WFH on companies success will determine whether it will be WFH or WFO. Whatever it is the rest of companies will have to adapt to new paradigm.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#37

Post by jmfldn »

Having tasted 1yr WFH I will never work for a company that doesn't give me autonomy in this area. My current company is letting us choose post-pandemic, and were they ever to backslide I'd vote with my feet and move jobs.

I think the key thing here is choice and being able to adopt a hybrid approach. The same approach doesn't work for all people, teams and companies. Having the power to choose is amazing though and us employees should fight tooth and nail to preserve these rights. Why should jobs that can be done remotely have a mandate attached about where you work on every day of the week? That's incredibly oppressive when you think about it.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#38

Post by MattGaiser »

babesh wrote: post #29

What the article is saying is that there are group benefits to working together and that they speculate that the traders in America did better than the traders in Europe because they worked together. Most comments I read on Hacker News that say that working from home is better measure a single individual’s output or that of a group that has worked together for a period of time. There may well be studies that show tha…

I would be interested in knowing how much a WFH preference correlates with how much engineering teams work together.

As I have never worked for an engineering team that did anything other than parcel out work and expect people to go and do it. Yes, there was some pair programming for tough parts and we do architecture together, but as a general rule I don't meaningfully talk to any other engineers for completing my features except maybe to ask 10-20 minutes of questions.

So the "working together" part to me mostly consists of me being in a meeting which is not all that technical and where I don't care what the decision is. I have far more hours sitting in meetings playing on my phone than I have genuinely engaged in collaborative development.

But on the other end you have companies like Pivotal which are 100% paired code writing.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#39

Post by flukus »

anthropodie wrote: post #7
philliphaydon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a comment in the Apple thread where someone said people who don't like WFH hate their family, or themselves. Which was a shocking comment. I love spending time with my family and daughter, but I get paid to work to support my family, and working from home makes me feel distracted. I thought working from home would be the best part of a job, but losing the separation of work/life, going from avoiding meetings to…

I guess finally it comes down to individual choice. Let people choose where they want to work from!

Problem is, many of the reasons people prefer in-office require the rest of us to be in the office. Some are manageable, if you like the social aspect there will be others like that and they can be social together. Others like "better collaboration" really require a decent chunk of your immediate team to be there.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#40

Post by Cthulhu_ »

philliphaydon wrote: post #5
jolux wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny because I feel like I’ve been reading article after article recently about how working in offices is dumb and they can’t imagine why anyone would do it anymore unless they were zombified corporate stooges. My feeling is that working in an office makes it possible for me to separate work from the rest of my life, and my commute (about 30 minutes, soon to be fifteen or less via public transit once I move) ni…

I saw a comment in the Apple thread where someone said people who don't like WFH hate their family, or themselves. Which was a shocking comment. I love spending time with my family and daughter, but I get paid to work to support my family, and working from home makes me feel distracted. I thought working from home would be the best part of a job, but losing the separation of work/life, going from avoiding meetings to…

It's the first / second / third place theorem; first place is your home and family life, second place is the workplace, and third life is leisure and social activities like the pub.

It's a really mixed bag for me. I finally left my previous job, even though I could finally work at HQ (instead of being sent out to customers) after a few years, and it was a very cushy HQ office with really fun colleagues and all that. On the other hand, they didn't have the work that gave me the gratification I wanted from a job.

I got a different job where the work is pretty much perfect, but the office is bad (basic linoleum rent-an-office with bad chairs and ventilation, although I do have my own office). I've been working from home since march last year and I never really feel like I want to go to the office. I might again now that the temperatures are going up, they have AC.

Yeah there's more distractions from the family, but at the same time it means I can do a lot more to look after them - my girlfriend had an appointment yesterday but also a migraine, I was there to take her to it instead of her having to suffer driving or canceling it, for example.

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