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People love working remotely

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Re: People love working remotely

#351

Post by swah »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #38
ReptileMan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. For me commute is the most pointlessly wasted time a person could do. And I have played lineage. So as long as your commute is 10 seconds home office beats real any time. At least until we get the whole teleportation thing nailed down.

I thought so too, but now, after WFH for 2+ years, I'd tolerate up to 2h commute a day total - assuming I'm not driving - for a private office at the workplace. Home is much more conductive to focused work than an open plan, but it comes with its own set of distractions. I dislike commute in general, but as long as I can read a book or use a laptop over it, it can be even more productive time than spending it at home…

Yes, I have a baby here. My ideal imaginary working condition changed from 'working from home' to 'working from a place that is a 10-20 minutes walk from home', and maybe with some colleagues. (And talking to people by typing gives me almost none of that human connection...)

Re: People love working remotely

#352

Post by lukaszkups »

I love remote work, I really do, but it's definitely not for everyone or a golden grail of work structure - I've even put my thoughts about it on my website: https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-work/

(shameless share, but please let me know what do you think about it if you want ;) )

Re: People love working remotely

#353

Post by mighty_bander »

ken wrote: post #174
Agentlien wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a private office for a couple of years. I've also worked in open plan landscapes as well as offices with 4-8 people. This year, however, I've started working from home a lot. I like it much more than any of the above and generally get so much more done. I can relax and breathe in my own home. Make some tea and sit in the garden when I need to think. My focus, productivity and well being have been through the ro…

Maybe I'm missing it, but these still sound like variations on the theme of "my office is lousy so working from home is relatively nicer". An hour commute is just nuts. According to statistics I found, that's more than double the average. I've worked at places with a 5 minute commute, and they're great. I realize not everyone has infinite flexibility in where they live, but a workplace would have to be pretty amazing…

In Toronto and the surrounding communities, a typical commute is 15 minutes through traffic-choked local streets, 30 minutes on a train, and 15 minutes walking through tunnels downtown. Each part of mine is longer, although I am able to work on the train and count it against my hours. But that's absolutely normal for any tech worker in this city. It's insane. I come in and have a conversation or two over the several hours I'm here, which I could easily have over the phone, and then I begin the monumental journey home.

My home workspace is an airy attic office with a view of trees and houses. My downtown office is an open-plan wreck with exposed pipes and broken chairs. I am pretty certain which one is more conducive to productivity, let alone which one means a higher quality of life.

Re: People love working remotely

#354

Post by Phillips126 »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #315
Phillips126 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on my 2nd week back on-site after being remote for nearly 2 years, it's been a tough transition. On-top of getting what feels like a large pay-cut (1 hour commute, car maintenance/fuel, etc) and having to deal with a cramped cubicle in a noisy area, I feel that my family life is also suffering. My office hours end later than I like (5pm) and with my commute I am home just in time for dinner and to put my young ki…

That's why you need some sort of productivity journal. Show that you were completing X number of tasks per month, and after a couple months show them that your productivity is down 10-20% in terms of tasks completed. Make it extremely easy to present, and if your Manager agrees to work with you on it, make it look like the work to compile this report was all theirs. In other words make them look good and do their job…

I've actually begun doing this now, but the company has decided to eliminate all future remote jobs (our department was the experiment I suppose). I would like to pass this journal keeping idea to anyone else remote. It likely would have saved me.

Re: People love working remotely

#355

Post by Phillips126 »

wastedhours wrote: post #139
protonimitate wrote: post #47

I like flexibility. I don't want to be forced into a open floor plan office. But I also don't want to be full time remote, or forced into a singular private office. I want to be able to go into an office when I feel like. Work out of a small office/conference room when it gets noisy. Sit in the open when it makes sense. Work from home when I need to be heads down. I wish management would stop looking for the "product…

We do that, and to be fair, it's really positive. We have an open plan area, booths if you want quiet work, meeting rooms for, well, meetings - and then you can WFH whenever you want to. It's a great approach, and I've enjoyed it for a good 3 years or so. It has the effect of damaging collaboration though - which for some roles is perfect (where I am, some roles you can be ignored for a good few days), but for ones l…

Sounds like a dream. I went from private office to WFH (2 years), and now back on-site in a cube farm. My focus, productivity and happiness went from high to very high, then all time low. The cubes I sit in are a mixed environment with developers, reception, IT, etc. so the noise is almost unbearable. I tend to do my best work in complete silence (sometimes low music). Considering asking my boss for a private office and if not then seeking alternative employment.

Re: People love working remotely

#356

Post by radlad »

dustinmoris wrote: post #106
radlad wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you spend weeks doing backlog grooming meetings every day? We do a single one-hour backlog grooming meeting before each sprint, to plan the work for that sprint. If you're planning out much further than that, that's not agile.

True agile teams never need to do backlog grooming. If a team has a backlog which is so big that it needs grooming, then they are not agile. An agile team build something, releases it to its users, and afterwards react to the immediate feedback/next important request. Teams which constantly re-prioritise items which some fake product manager came up with a few months ago is not agile.

The backlog is not large and we don't use this meeting for prioritization.

Our team uses backlog grooming to point tasks and assign them "definitions of done". This is done to solve two problems: getting everyone on the same page as far as how the task will be done, which also speeds up diff reviews, and to determine if the task should be split up into smaller tasks.

When would you perform these tasks?

> Teams which constantly re-prioritise items which some fake product manager came up with a few months ago is not agile.

This is not at all what we do with this meeting.

Re: People love working remotely

#357

Post by pletnes »

dls2016 wrote: post #186
wolco wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happened to me. What I did was go into the office and constantly talk to the vp's and ceo. Not about anything important really boring weather/how are you doing? The more removed the person from my department the more I would go out of my way to talk to them. Start asking difficult questions at the all staff forums. Always threw in doubts in meetings with non-tech people. I asked for a special chair for my back. Start…

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."

I find it fascinating that the word «quisling» was already in use, coined after the Norwegian traitor from WW2.

Re: People love working remotely

#358

Post by jbarberu »

repomies691 wrote: post #95
vidanay wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only an option for most people if there are locker/shower facilities at the office (most do not have this)

Every company I have worked for has had showers. Even the lousiest office I was working in back in the days had this kind of shower installed in the cleaning room. Did the trick.

2/3 of my offices have had access to showers too, pretty neat.

Re: People love working remotely

#359

Post by jbarberu »

ReptileMan wrote: post #343
jbarberu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to discredit your opinion, we're all different. For me the commute is worth the benefit of human interactions, seeing my coworkers for lunch and I also go to the gym next to my office. If I could only have my own private office it'd be great...

What prevents you from going out on a lunch with someone or the gym while working remotely? You just have to live in a metro area, not suburbs. I generally have done that for the last 13 years.

Well, you answered the question for me "You just have to live in a metro area, not suburbs".

I'm not saying I couldn't do both of those things when working from home, merely that as an added bonus of working out of an office I end up doing those things more often.

Re: People love working remotely

#360

Post by eikenberry »

mgkimsal wrote: post #267
eikenberry wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why you have occasional gatherings. To help establish trust and a better sense of community. Every remote position I've held has had at least a yearly get-together for just this reason.

and... if you start 2 weeks after the last yearly get together... you're on the outs for a long time. nothing against yearly meetings, but would hope people have ways of getting together more often if the group decides its necessary.

You can have different forms of meet-ups as well. My current company has the yearly gathering, plus the employees who live locally have a monthly lunch. None of them are on my team, but it still makes for some nice work-oriented socializing.
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