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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

#381

Post by data_acquired »

I'm fascinated by the discussions around creativity and remote work both on this forum and elsewhere.

What is the fraction of open source code [by which I mean community-maintained and built rather than through a company] that ends up being collaborated on remotely? Aren't projects like Linux and others largely managed through remote means (although there are conferences and such from time to time)? Do we really have a strong case that these projects suffer due to the lack of a single office for people to gather everyday? I'm sure my questions can be split into sub-cases and exceptions.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#383

Post by red-iron-pine »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #344
AHOHA wrote: post #330

>The idea of fully remote work becoming the norm has come and gone The idea has always been there, it was never new, and it didn’t go anywhere and I don’t think it’s going anywhere either. And then the article says >and the technology is not yet good enough that people can be full remote forever, particularly on startups." Followed by at the end >He also worries some might be freeing up time by using A.I. tools like…

Companies are already unable to check if they are utilising their employees time efficiently. People can look awfully busy without doing anything of value. And at some point you want to use strict monitoring (perhaps assisted by AI) to keep tabs on them, they can just as easily work from home. But I doubt that's legal.

monitoring your use of company assets at home is plenty legal.

like, companies can force you to keep your camera on. they already track away time, number of keystrokes per hour, and can parse your MS Teams calls and provide transcripts -- they even do this for end users.

Legal Hold software already does this if you need to flag a user. It's not GPT-4 but you can get pretty good insights into what your workers are or are not doing.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#384

Post by slenk »

danaris wrote: post #199
_s wrote: post #21

I assume he’s got either direct or indirect links to commercial realestate; as an owner or investor or something else. It makes literally 0 business sense to be forking out anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand per employee per month to give them a space to work, when that can just be avoided. The amount of cost and overheads involved; from insurance to upkeep to rent to OHS - a work space is probably the nex…

> I assume he’s got either direct or indirect links to commercial realestate; as an owner or investor or something else. This isn't necessarily the case. Most of the people calling for an end to remote work do not, I suspect, fall into this category—they're managers and execs of all kinds of companies. What they get out of it isn't more money. It's more control. It's a return to a world where "verify by eye that the…

And trusting your employees to be adults takes away a lot of those pointless middle-management positions

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#385

Post by Clubber »

ilyt wrote: post #375
Clubber wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of companies' politics / culture is absolutely toxic. Everyone can see through it but pretends they can't because they are mercenaries. Office Space and Dilbert have resonated for decades for a reason. Who wants to play office team building games with some random office supplies? Nobody.

> Who wants to play office team building games with some random office supplies? That's the first time I heard term "office supplies" used to call co-workers

Hah. That's funny, but that's not what I meant. I mean when they play silly games like who can bowl a tennis ball into a trash can, who can build the biggest pencil tower, who can build a paper airplane that can fly the furthest, etc.

"Office supplies," we might have created a new term for an "office NPC."

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#386

Post by [deleted] »

Klinky wrote: post #293
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#387

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

Klinky wrote: post #293
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Figuring out what a building should look like is different from pouring the cement. It is unfortunate, but in our specific case the team likes getting that cement poured. They focus and they get a lot of work done, only then it has to be re-done as it turns out everyone actually had very different ideas.

This isn’t necessarily a remote/non-remote work problem, but I think that’s why that guy in the original article talks about the benefits of having people in the office.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#388

Post by sibeliuss »

ghotli wrote: post #271
01100011 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying remote work only works for Seniors, or remote work is over for Seniors?

My take is this person is saying their organization does remote poorly and the more junior engineers aren't set up for success. That has nothing to do with remote work at large and feels more like a reflection of the structures in place in that particular situation.

We do remote fine, but it is simply impractical to expect success from jrs in a remote work environment. They need more support and side-by-side guidance to succeed. It's a downward spiral for anyone except the most exceptionally engaged.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#389

Post by RestlessMind »

taylodl wrote: post #376
onion2k wrote: post #325

The full quote is a bit narrower than the title implies; > "I think definitely one of the tech industry's worst mistakes in a long time was that everybody could go full remote forever, and startups didn't need to be together in person and, you know, there was going to be no loss of creativity,” he told attendees. "I would say that the experiment on that is over, and the technology is not yet good enough that people c…

I bet he also advocates for open office plans as well - after all, you need to maximize the team's communication and collaboration in order to maintain your level of creativity. Of course we all know this is rubbish. We also know there's a need for teams to be able to come together. We've discovered it's best to have set times and of course ad-hoc times to collaborate - to essentially come together the way we did bac…

> In fact, prior to the pandemic the environment in which I saw the most remote teams was in startups.

Mind sharing some examples? Among the startups I know (big and small), they were all in-office. Some famous examples - Robinhood, Stripe, Figma, Coinbase, Confluent...

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#390

Post by RestlessMind »

elzbardico wrote: post #333

Well, it is kind of funny when a millionaire tech bro tell me that remote work doesn't work to build some silly food delivery applications, when those silly applications run on top of an open source stack that was always heavily built on remote and async settings.

That's why I love free markets. Sam is free to experiment with in-office or hybrid model. If you think remote is best, go for it. Ultimately, market will speak loud and clear. Smart people will learn.

My personal belief is that hybrid is the best model.

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